Shock of shock, I somehow qualified for an unsecured credit card, despite having no real credit history. American Express Blue sent me a “you’re prequalified” letter early last week, and I thought, what the hell, I’ll put in an online application. Can’t hurt too much since nothing has even pinged my credit for quite some time – last time (for something I initiated anyway) was for my cellphone account almost two years ago. Echoed all the (correct, of course) contact info/offer number from the offer they sent, let ‘em know my income, submitted it, and waited 30 seconds or so for them to do whatever processing they do. After which came up a page that was meant to tell me whether the application had been accepted, but was more than a bit mangled (probably just a written-for-IE page being shown in Firefox – if they’d just stick to web standards, all would be good everywhere, but that’s a whole conversation that belongs elsewhere), so I had no clue one way or the other.
Honestly, I assumed a denial letter would find it’s way to me based on that lack-of-credit-history thing. But, no, today I find a couple shiny new clear AMEX Blue cards (one ‘s in the wife’s name as well) waiting for me in my mailbox, with a good sized limit, a solid 15 months of 0% on new purchases/transfers, and most surprising to me, a decent 7.99% after those 15 months. So it looks like it might be about time to do a little balance allocation…
