Consumer complaint received 2019-10-23
Company: DISCOVER BANK
State: CA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Getting a credit card
Sub-issue: Application denied

Complaint:
I previously held a Discover credit card in XXXX. The card was closed with a XXXX   balance on XX/XX/XXXX. I filed for Bankruptcy Chapter XXXX in XX/XX/XXXX and it was discharged in XX/XX/XXXX. Discover was never included in the bankruptcy. I was never late with Discover. I never missed a payment and my payments were never returned. 

Approximately one year later, in XX/XX/XXXX, I applied for a Discover card and was rejected for " STATUS OF EXISTING / PRIOR DISCOVER CARD ACCOUNT. '' I called customer service and they told me there was nothing they could do because it was showing as a bankruptcy. I supplied information to all the credit bureaus and had the account updated to reflect the correct status : Paying/paid as agreed. Closed by consumer. 

In XX/XX/XXXX, I used Discover 's pre-approval tool and was denied due to " STATUS OF EXISTING / PRIOR DISCOVER CARD ACCOUNT. '' Knowing that this was incorrect, I called the customer support team. They told me that my application had been rejected due to my previous card being included in bankruptcy. I informed them this was incorrect, they looked at the data and agreed - sending me up to a supervisor. Eventually, I reached a man named XXXX in a high-up credit reporting department or something of the like. His direct line is XXXX. I spoke with him on and off for two weeks while he worked to get all notations of my bankruptcy removed. Once he verified that it had been corrected, he told me to submit an application. At this point, I had spent no less than 5 hours on the phone with Discover through various stages of this process. 

Over the next month, I submitted at least 7 different pre-approvals at the suggestion of people in the Acquisitions department and could get no confirmation that my status had been updated. I spent an additional 4 hours on the phone with application specialists, and Acquisition team members trying to find out more information. Trusting what XXXX had told me, I decided to apply again, believing that because my credit reports reflected correctly and I had someone already clean my account of any erroneous reporting, that this would not be an obstacle. 

I submitted an application on XX/XX/XXXX and received a hard inquiry on my XXXX credit report as a result. The application was rejected solely for the reason of " STATUS OF EXISTING / PRIOR DISCOVER CARD ACCOUNT. '' I immediately called the application team and asked for a supervisor after explaining my dilemma. She, XXXX, told me that there was nothing she could do about my application or the inquiry - but she did say that she could see that my previous account in Discover 's system showed " Bankruptcy '' for a status, yet she could clearly see that the account was closed before the bankruptcy was filed. She then put me on hold and spoke with the " Bankruptcy '' Department ( Ph # XXXX ). She transferred me to a woman named XXXX who profusely apologized for the error and said she was forwarding it to her supervisor for immediate correction. XXXX said to call them back in 72 hours and it would be fixed, and then I could apply again. 

When I inquired about her removing the inquiries, she seemed confused and didnt understand that I was asking for the inquiry to be removed since Discover rejected my application based on false information. I said I would like to apply again, but did not think it was fair to receive two hard inquiries simply because of an error Discover had made with their internal systems. 

After getting transferred to her supervisor, it turned out to be XXXX - who I had spent several weeks talking to previously. He apologized profusely for the mistake and said that there was simply an error in the system. He said he submitted to fix it again, but couldnt make any promises about getting the hard inquiry removed. At this point, Discover has taken up more than a full days time from me, to fix an error that should have never been included to begin with. They also have put two hard inquiries on my credit report that were based on factually inaccurate information. 

Simply put, because I did not have an active account with Discover at the time of bankruptcy, there should never have been any notation applied to my previous account. I have been patient, but this habit of mis-reporting and mislabeling consumer accounts is immoral and should definitely be considered illegal. 

I have been financially harmed by Discovers refusal to remove a hard inquiry and refusal to manually review the application since it had been rejected based on false information. Discover was put on notice about the misreporting multiple times and their customer service reps could see the illegitimate bankruptcy reporting, yet Discover did nothing about it.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation