Business Credit

The no hassle card is a big hassle

If you think Cap1 is so good visit my message board and read the horror stories

What is in your wallet? Hopefully not a crap1 card.

 

I use the Advanta Business card and they say the patriot act requires them to take your SSN, not EIN. you will have to use your SSN in the application or you will probably be denied. they also look at both personal and business credit.

it can be really hard to establish business credit if you have bad personal credit because you will most likely need to sign anything business related as a personal guarantor and tehy will ask for your ssn. personal credit is heaviily depended on especially when you are first starting to establish business credit. once you have great business credit, personal credit is less of a factor. i suggest starting out small, go to local banks and ask for small loans in the name of your business to start building business credit. they may agree to give you business loans if you prove to them you are actively trying ot rebuild your personal credit and if you show them you are strong in at least 3 of the other 4 c's (credit history, cash flow, collateral and character). hope that helped.

 

We just recently had a bad experience with Advanta as well. My husband called them to get credit for our business. He explained multiple times that we did not want his personal credit run for this. The rep that he was speaking with told him that they needed his name and DOB for the patriot act but that they would use the EIN for the number and they would not run his credit. Well low and behold the next day I get an alert on his credit that Advanta put in an inquiry.


My husband called them and advised that he never gave permission to run his credit and that they could check the tape and hear that. The rep said she would check it and get back to us. She called back and said that the supervisor said he did say it was ok. My husband said ok, then play the tape for me. She said she would have to get back to him. So a couple days go by and nothing so he calls back. We get another supervisor who says that they don't have to let us listen to the tape and they would not remove the inquiry.

She said that they wouldn't have taken the EIN, only the SSN, meanwhile when they tried to look it up, they were only able to pull it up by the EIN.

I am so mad I have contacted the magazine that runs their ad to tell them about the scam they run.

 

To the OP:

You first need to establish a business credit file in order to take your personal credit out of any application process. The best way of doing so is as follows:

1) Apply for an EIN if you have not already done so,

2) Apply for and establish some Net 30 accounts through vendors which report to DNB such as Nebs, Uline, Reliable, so on and so forth, to the extent that you have four or five reporting insofar as that is usually enough to generate a Paydex score,

3) Get a DNB number (this can be difficult without signing up for their creditbuilder garbage). Go to their site an apply with a government contractor number. Then you will need an "eUpdate" password which in my experience is typically the last six digits of your DNB number,

4) Apply at Staples and Office Depot so that you will get some "revolving" accounts to report to Smartbusinessreports (Experian);

and,

5) Hold off for a while and let your file age for say 3 to 6 months. After that time, apply for the Home Depot Revolving or Mastercard. If approved, give it a while longer and attempt straight Citibank products. They are much less inclined to pull personal reports than any other major creditor.

With that said, you still will have to personally guarantee anything if you are a LLC, LP, or sole proprietor.

 

Our company is an LLC and we just got a Lowe's and Home Depot card without a personal guarantee.

 

Business credit without personal guarantee

DH and I both have sole prop businesses. Both of us already were listed with DNB for over a year. My biz PAYDEX 41. DH biz PAYDEX 78 (just recently got a paydex-needed 4 or more accounts to get a score). We both applied individually to Lowes and received the same CL $2000 each. He also went to Home Depot and was approved for CL $1700. I haven't tried yet. Online Lowe's application was denied twice prior to instore appl based on checking Equifax biz report and said "Unable to verify business name." Instore credit application asks for your DNB# and Experian#. I only knew my DNB but not my Experian# and I was still approved but for the CL $2000.

A few months ago, we applied for Staples cc online. The credit dept called to verify biz and approved for a courtesy CL $750. That helped us accumulate the accounts we needed to get a DNB paydex score.

 

I'm curious about business credit as well. If there are any others that have knowledge of obtaining credit for a business please chime in. Also, if any of the original posters could elaborate that would be helpful.

We own a maid service in IL. We have been in business since 2001 as a Limited Liability Partnership. We had a GR last year of 1.2M. We have never applied for a credit card or any other form of credit for the business except for one time. That was with Chase and it was about 6 months after we opened our doors. They didn't do a business credit check, rather, they checked our account balances (we bank there) for the business and ran my personal credit report. They issued a card for $5k, which is now, about 6 years later, at $20k.

Could there possibly be a credit file open for my business somewhere that I do not know about and if so, how do I check it?

 

Which Lowes card did you apply for the small to medium or medium to large???