Consumer complaint received 2018-03-16
Company: BARCLAYS BANK DELAWARE
State: NY
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Advertising and marketing, including promotional offers
Sub-issue: Confusing or misleading advertising about the credit card

Complaint:
On XX/XX/XXXX I applied for and was denied for by Barclaycard US for the XXXX XXXX credit card. I was debating on whether I should accept a pre-selected offer from XXXX XXXX XXXX for their Cash Rewards XXXX or the XXXX XXXX card. I have been weighing and evaluating on which card would make more sense for my type of spend, and being that I commute using XXXX  a lot to go to work and dining out quite often. It made more sense for me to go with the XXXX XXXX from Barclays. Since XX/XX/XXXX, I have been doing my research about the company, about the card and reviewing my credit reports each time and made sure that I checked off all the possible boxes. I have read, and researched their terms and conditions, which made NO mention of the credit criteria and factors they would review to consider one for a credit card account. I pride myself for keeping my credit profile in check, though it maybe young, I have displayed flawless payments and management of my finances. It came as a surprise that they denied my application. I was denied because I did not have a long credit history. And that even a small starting limit was not an option. I have called and reached out to their credit analyst four times or more to plead my case and begged them to reconsider me on the basis of my responsible management of my accounts throughout the full 1 and a half years that I have been using credit cards. During the call for reconsideration, they have asked me the following : Q : How long have you worked with your current employer My answer was I have worked for the company since XX/XX/XXXX. I was hired in XX/XX/XXXX and started working officially on XX/XX/XXXX till present.

Q : Why did I only start with credit in XX/XX/XXXX?

Prior to XX/XX/XXXX, I have opted to live and pay for my bills in cash. Paid everything through my debit card. Then XX/XX/XXXXcame and I decided to move out of apartment sharing and opted to live alone and tried to qualify for a rent controlled apartment in New York. I was repeatedly declined because I did not have credit history. So since then, I have actively tried to find ways to kick start my credit journey. But still took my time since I did not know how to start it. I thought that having a bank account and an internet bill at the time would build me a credit history of some sort. I knew nothing about credit management. Until an work colleague suggested I tried to apply for a credit card to start a history and since then, I tried, but just like my apartment applications, I was being denied for having no credit history. I had no one guiding me, until I decided to go to my bank XXXX XXXX to inquire, and was told that I can open a secured credit to start building some history. Which I did and since then, I had only had stellar payment history with them, they graduated my card, and within the year, I was able to successfully acquire new trade lines, all of which had flawless payment history. One year since opening those accounts is when I decided to apply for this card managed by Barclays.

Q : Multiple Credit Inquiries I explained to them that as someone starting off with credit, I had no choice but to try and apply for accounts to see which one I would get approved for. It was my understanding that inquiries should only affect the consumers report for one year, and that although the inquiry will stay on the report for two years, lenders would only consider the most recent inquiries on the report, and to my recollection, I had aged of all inquiries on that report the last being XX/XX/XXXXwhen I applied for and was approved by XXXX XXXX. They questioned my 6 inquiries with XXXX which were all from XX/XX/XXXX.

Q : I have XXXX available credit limit, then why do I have 0 % Utilization?

I use all of my existing cards, about 20-25 % of the available credit and pay them down before the statement closes. As that is easier for me in terms of allocating funds and managing my finances. I want to pay down stuff when I already have the money for it. And all my other credit card companies seem to appreciate that. I also explained to them that my spending is usually for Groceries, occasional dining and commute/travel since I always have to take the train in to work. But I just pay them down since that is how I like to handle my accounts. I did not think that it would be seen as a negative.

Bottomline, they denied me for my length of credit history. Age of my oldest account is 1 year and 6 mos. And the Average age of all my accounts is 1 year. There was no mention of that in their webpage nor terms and conditions. They did not mention anything that if you had limited or x number of mos. or years of credit history, please wait until x number of years before you apply for a Barclaycard. If I knew that they would look down upon people with young credit profiles. I would not have wasted an inquiry and could have given that inquiry to a lender that would see the work I have done with my credit history and appreciate it, not to be grilled by and be discriminated against because my credit history is not long enough. I review factors, and it was my understanding that the positives on my credit report outweighed the age of my credit history. I wish I did not waste the inquiry. My goal was to strengthen my credit profile and not tarnish it. This year I planned to apply for that one XXXX   card as that is the only thing missing among my trade lines and I do groceries a lot at Costco which sadly takes nothing else but a XXXX XXXX card, which is why I had opted to apply for one this year. Waited a whole year for it, just to get denied. And the sad part was that, it was Barclays that I chose to build a relationship with. I could have qualified with XXXX XXXX XXXX, and now, I have to hold off and age the inquiries again, before I could apply with a different bank. Financial institutions should really give some base line criteria from the get go, so that consumers can review them and make their determination whether to apply or not. I did not know that they needed people with long credit histories. At least XXXX XXXX would break it down on their page and differentiate their criteria for each of their Credit card products.

I have attached a copy of my credit reports and the terms and conditions I pulled and read prior to applying for the Barclays card. On my report you would see the positive factors and the negative factors. They pulled my XXXX report, but sadly, the work I had on all my accounts did nothing for them to reconsider my application.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation