Questions: 1. Providian. Good or bad company? 2. It's a platinum card offer, 1% cash back, 19.99% interest, up to $5k limit (I'm sure they'll give me something lower like $500 or so though) 3. I have 3 credit cards currently. None offer cashback. The 1% thing does interest me for sure. Is it going to make it harder to keep working on my score by getting yet another credit card? 4. My scores are EQ 560, EX 560 (plus score), and TU 596 (not sure if that was FICO or not). So my scores pretty much suck still. Should I take it? I've been getting this offer like every 2 days for the past 3 or 4 weeks. I don't want to just accept everything offered to me but the 1% cash back intrigues me.
Providian is generally one of the companies to avoid, but as with all of them, there are those who like their products. What is going on with your credit reports? If you are repairing them and improving your scores, then I would hold out for a better offer.
Ok, I'll avoid then. I'm working on cleaning them up right now. Just 'broke the enemy's back' on a charge off (it really wasn't legit anyway, but it's been a 2 year fight) and 4 late notations... have another collection under validation that I highly doubt can respond with anything (but that's another story), and a few late payments to tackle still (Cap1 and wells fargo are being strict about not removing them). I recently moved and had to use the credit cards to help out, but those should be paid off again next month (right now I'm at like 91% utilization) so that should help too, I think I lost like 50+ points from utilization alone. Soon I'll be in the high 600s I hope I suppose it's dumb to do this right now anyway when I think about it. I'm on the road to a WAY better score and I'll just hold out for something I really want instead.
my opinion is avoid them. high fees, hidden fees..bad error checking skills on their reporting to CRA's. i equate them with orchard bank..loan sharks.
