Often times, when you complete a credit card application, you will get prompted with a message that says: “Your application is pending/under review, we will contact you via mail or email with a decision in 7-10 days.” God I hate that response!!! American Express is much better at providing instant approval or denial and you can find out instantly whether or not you were approved for their card, however, most other banks take their time in issuing a response to your application. Thus, whenever I’m not instantly approved for an application, I call the bank’s reconsideration line and find out what it will take for me to get approved on the spot. Sometimes they just require you to verify your information, other times you may have too much credit with that bank and they will want you to move around some credit or close a different card to make room for that new card.

My Recent Application for the Chase Ink Bold Card:

I applied for the Chase Ink Bold Card the other day to take advantage of the lucrative 5x spending categories and buy myself some of those Visa Gift Cards that are being offered on Staples.com. I received the dreaded response that my application could take forever before I most likely receive a denial. So I retrieved this handy page that lists off the major banks’ reconsideration lines and called up Chase’s business credit card reconsideration number. These phone numbers will directly connect you to a representative without having to go through an automated robot or a bunch of message prompts before being able to speak with a real person.

Chase Ink Bold

In the past I’ve called in and only had to verify my info or move around some credit, but this time they wanted much more from me. I had to provide my business, my revenue, projected revenue, how much I anticipate spending on the card per month, gross annual income, and more. This has never happened to me before and I’m not sure why Chase took such an interest as my credit score is quite high and I possess many of their consumer cards. But I guess since they keep the consumer and business card programs totally separate, they wanted to inquire all about my business prospects in advance. I told them everything they wanted to know and was finally approved. I don’t anticipate I will have to go through any such arduous questions for other future Chase business card applications.

Maximizing Credit Pulls:

I normally like to apply for more than one credit card from a bank in the same day to maximize only one credit hit against my score. I usually apply for 2-3 cards at a time and often get the response that my application is under review, so the reconsideration tool can be very valuable at times. If you only apply to one credit card at a time and your application happens to get denied, it is important that you make sure you call the reconsideration department and find a way to have that card opened. You don’t want to have a needless credit pull taken against your score without receiving a credit card approval. A new card often offsets the negative pull against your score as you increase your credit limit with a new card and improve your utilization ratio. I recently applied for the Citi AAdvantage 100,000 point credit card offer and my score increased by 6 points. So keep those reconsideration phone numbers stored away and bring them out the next time you need to push that credit card from declined or pending into an approval.

Citi Executive AAdvantage World Elite MasterCard