My Recent Barclays US Air App Experience

[papa]

Getting approved for a Barclays card can be a crapshoot sometimes, so I thought I'd share my experience from today.

I applied for a US Air card yesterday and did not get instant approval. This was the first app of three today. The online application check said I had been declined. This would be my third US Air card (the other two have been closed). The most recent was closed in May after being opened a year before that. I also have an Arrival card.

Twice before I have called into Barclays to be reconsidered for a card (US Airways and Lufthansa). Both were failures, so I assumed this time would be as well.

One of the first things the agent asked was for my permission to pull my credit report. I assumed it had already been done when I applied, and when I asked her about it, she said the system sometimes doesn't automatically pull the credit report if there have been previous applications in the system.

She pulled my credit, noted a balance on my Amex, asked about how I use my credit cards, and asked about my income. She went away for a few minutes and (seemingly reluctantly) approved me for a new card with a $5k credit limit.

Here are my takeaways from this experience... Barclays can be difficult to get approvals from if you frequently open up new cards. This year has been fairly light for me (I think I've only opened 5-6 this year), so I think that worked in my favor. And as we already know, if you're denied online, it's worth a shot to call in. Calling the recon line rarely works with Barclays, but I was lucky enough to have it work out for me today.

Happy churning.

 

[PatPat]

Thanks for the data point.

I'm going to apply to some cards later today (possibly the last time I'll apply to CCs this year) and was contemplating getting this card but I've already applied to the Arrival+ less than 2 months ago, my first card with Barclays. This is my first year applying for credit cards and I've already applied to 6 cards this year, all being approved without needing to call recon. I've read about the difficulty of getting Barclays approval so it makes me hesitant. I could wait a while...but I don't know when the US Air card offer may disappear.

I'm leaning towards applying anyway, but letting it be the first credit pull of the round of apps.

 

[papa]

You may be wasting a pull if you apply for the US Air now. Check out the wiki on Flyertalk. The general consensus is that you need at least 6 months in between Barclays apps. My guess is that we will have plenty of notice before the US Air issued by Barclays goes away. The bloggers will certainly let us know about it. If I were you, I'd do this app o rama without it and make it part of my first app o rama in 2015. If you do decide to apply, definitely let us know how it goes.

 

[PatPat]

@papa Yeah, it's certainly a YMMV situation. I've read in those threads that people were able to get two Barclays cards in 60 days, sometimes even a few weeks. Since my history with Barclays is very short, I'm likely to be declined outright. Now I'm convincing myself not to apply...