A while back I wrote about my gf and her adventures with credit. Breifly, she got into big trouble starting about 6-7 years ago. About 5 years ago she started up with a CCCS type place but she never really kept track of what they were doing. I convinced her to try out the Credit Manager from Experian to see what was what. She got her Experian score (600) but also saw several big anomolies: a judgement for an account that was being paid via the debt management company, a charge off for an account she never owned etc etc. Three weeks ago she got an offer from Providian for the clearly smart Visa. We had a bet of whether or not she could get it--she did (and I won the bet and got dinner at Bennihana Interesingly, they did two verifications: one was by calling the house and leaving a message for her to call back, the second was to snail mail her a letter asking her to call them. When she called, she got to talking to the rep who told her she was considered a "prime" candidate for their card because she had 5 years of perfect payment history on her credit report (the debt management company). So the rep said she was approved for a $7500 limit and they would probably boost it to $10k in 6-9 months if she had no problems with them!
