Got a letter for a preapproved Discover - whoohoo- my first Prime preapproval since I started this repair journey 8 months ago. Does preapproved ALWAYS mean that an inquiry won't be pulled? I think I might want the card - but don't want the inquiry. Any suggestions as to how to pull this off?
A preapproval hardly ever means no inq will be pulled. They will pull your report(s). The only preapprovals I have ever received that didn't pull a report was the Chevron and 76 gas cards. They were approved with no inq.
As I understand it, the credit card companies can do a promotional inquiry with the credit bureaus for pre-approval and such. The promotional inquiry is not a hard inquiry and doesn't show up when others request your report. Basically, it goes something like this... Discover says to one of the credit bureaus "Send me the names and addresses of 10,000 people with scores above 750". The bureau sends the information and Discover sends out the pre-approval letters. At this point Discover still hasn't seen your credit report. All they have is your name and address and the fact that your score is over 750 (or whatever they requested) When you actually apply they still want to pull your report so they have the whole thing. Because they know your score (from the time they did the promotional inquiry) they know that they will very likely approve you, but since time has passed since they did the inquiry something might have changed on your report, or there may be something on there that would prevent them from approving you. Because of this I highly doubt that you would get them to approve you without an inquiry. HTH, Brett
Thanks. I think I'll stay away from this one. I don't really have a desire for a Discover card, plus I've seen some bad reviews here on CN. I'll keep waiting till a good one comes around.
