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My credit score is 850! Why did I get denied for Apple financing?!

kupkakez

kupkakez

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Apr 4, 2011
2,120
1,327
Austin, TX
Several threads are popping up this afternoon of people curious as to why despite a "high" score they still got denied a loan.

Obtaining credit is more than just a credit score. Additionally what you THINK is your credit score may just be your FAKO score. One of the only reliable places to get a true FICO score is via myfico.com and you do have to pay to get it. I also find my score through my Discover IT card statement to be accurate.

A FAKO score, something obtained from a place like Credit Karma can be wildly off! It can be higher than your true FICO or lower than your true FICO. My CK score has been up to 40 points incorrect!

So I know my FICO score is 850 but I was still denied?! WHAT? This is because a lender looks at more than just that number. Common things looked at when determining to lend is:

Average Age of Accounts (AAoA) how long have your credit accounts been open? Did you just get a car loan last month that is going to lower your AAoA, ever new tradeline added to your account lowers the Average Age of Accounts.

Debt to Income Ratio (DTI) what does your DTI look like? You get this number by adding up all of your monthly debt responsibilities and dividing them by your gross monthly income. An ideal DTI is going to be under 36%. If your DTI is at or over 36% you are going to have a hard time obtaining financing. This is seen as a risk to the lender.

Hard Inquiries on your credit report. Have you been trying to obtain financing for a car? for a house? Gone on a recent "app spree" to obtain new credit cards or loans? A majority of the time when you reach out to obtain credit you get what is called a hard inquiry on your report. Too many of these in a short time sends a red flag to your potential lender that you may be trying to obtain a lot of credit in a short period of time due to some pending crisis. Lenders do not like to see a lot of hard inquiries in short periods of times, it looks like trouble.

These are the big 3 I can think of off the top of my head and they all play a major part in determining if you are to be approved or not. Apply this to outside of Macrumors as well and your financed Apple phone, not enough people know the game that is credit and it can be very confusing why you didn't get approved.

Mods if this isn't appropriate move it to wasteland but I figured this could help someone who isn't as credit savvy or confused. I know it's frustrating to get denied and not know why right away.

EDIT: I want to add, no I of course do not have an 850 score only about 10% of Americans do. I wrote 850 as a means to show that no matter that number you can be denied. An 850 or even an 800 does not mean a guaranteed loan. A 720 could get a loan over 800, it's very dependent on your profile. etc
 
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noobinator said:
You have a perfect score? Right
Click to expand...

Absolutely not, never claimed I did. A lot of people are wondering why they have high scores and aren't getting approved. It's just one piece of the puzzle. Did you read the thread or just the title? I'm guessing the title.
 
kupkakez said:
Absolutely not, never claimed I did. A lot of people are wondering why they have high scores and aren't getting approved. It's just one piece of the puzzle.
Click to expand...
There is a thread on Reddit that says that the bank involved is having trouble with their systems customers are just getting denied approval arbitrarily. Supposedly they're working on fixing the problem
 
noobinator said:
850 is a perfect score.
Click to expand...

And I put that to state you can still get denied with a perfect score. Someone mentioned they had an 800 and were denied. It's not about the score, you could have an 850 and be denied.

Trust me I am not at 850 ;)
 
The VantageScore is not FAKO, it's just not FICO. From what I've learned, most banks and creditors don't use it for pulls, but it's still a legitimate credit scoring system, and considering Credit Karma gives you 'free" access to it, it's good to know.
 
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phpmaven said:
There is a thread on Reddit that says that the bank involved is having trouble with their systems customers are just getting denied approval arbitrarily. Supposedly they're working on fixing the problem
Click to expand...

I could believe this, but what if you paid full retail and would have rather financed? Just seems like a sticky situation all around.
 
I am at 850 (or at least was before a couple of hard pulls) and had no issues this morning.
 
kupkakez said:
A true FICO is 850, Vantagescore can go up to over 900.

Most lenders are looking at your FICO.
Click to expand...
That's what I thought too, but I have had scores in the 849 at the dealership and they told me the scoring went to 900.
 
doboy said:
That's what I thought too, but I have had scores in the 849 at the dealership and they told me the scoring went to 900.
Click to expand...

They probably were using VantageScore, it all depends on who is doing your financing.

I'm going to assume Citizens Bank is utilizing a traditional FICO, if anyone has any info to the contrary please share.
 
kupkakez said:
Several threads are popping up this afternoon of people curious as to why despite a "high" score they still got denied a loan.

Obtaining credit is more than just a credit score. Additionally what you THINK is your credit score may just be your FAKO score. One of the only reliable places to get a true FICO score is via myfico.com and you do have to pay to get it. I also find my score through my Discover IT card statement to be accurate.

A FAKO score, something obtained from a place like Credit Karma can be wildly off! It can be higher than your true FICO or lower than your true FICO. My CK score has been up to 40 points incorrect!

So I know my FICO score is 850 but I was still denied?! WHAT? This is because a lender looks at more than just that number. Common things looked at when determining to lend is:

Average Age of Accounts (AAoA) how long have your credit accounts been open? Did you just get a car loan last month that is going to lower your AAoA, ever new tradeline added to your account lowers the Average Age of Accounts.

Debt to Income Ratio (DTI) what does your DTI look like? You get this number by adding up all of your monthly debt responsibilities and dividing them by your gross monthly income. An ideal DTI is going to be under 36%. If your DTI is at or over 36% you are going to have a hard time obtaining financing. This is seen as a risk to the lender.

Hard Inquiries on your credit report. Have you been trying to obtain financing for a car? for a house? Gone on a recent "app spree" to obtain new credit cards or loans? A majority of the time when you reach out to obtain credit you get what is called a hard inquiry on your report. Too many of these in a short time sends a red flag to your potential lender that you may be trying to obtain a lot of credit in a short period of time due to some pending crisis. Lenders do not like to see a lot of hard inquiries in short periods of times, it looks like trouble.

These are the big 3 I can think of off the top of my head and they all play a major part in determining if you are to be approved or not. Apply this to outside of Macrumors as well and your financed Apple phone, not enough people know the game that is credit and it can be very confusing why you didn't get approved.

Mods if this isn't appropriate move it to wasteland but I figured this could help someone who isn't as credit savvy or confused. I know it's frustrating to get denied and not know why right away.
Click to expand...


yea listen to this poster, he/she knows what he/she's talking about. I also found my free fico on my discover acct to be the most accurate out of a whole bunch free ones i get on my other cards . Credit karma was the worse, it was off by 100 points.
 
kupkakez said:
They probably were using VantageScore, it all depends on who is doing your financing.

I'm going to assume Citizens Bank is utilizing a traditional FICO, if anyone has any info to the contrary please share.
Click to expand...
Yes they use FICO. I had some items financed through their student program and the representative said Citizens checks it against FICO.
 
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I run credit reports daily approving loans, at least you're not a 300 credit score wanting to buy a $50k truck :)
 
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Been saying this in a couple other threads, but everyone applying for the program should make sure their credit card company approves the initiation of a new loan. A large number of you with excellent credit might be getting declined because you didn't verify the purchase process with your CCC.
 
I had to spend around two hours at a Sprint store,as this guy asked questions and in putted them into a Sprint new account file. I mean it was a really long and drawn out process. I was also asked to speak to a lady at Sprints Kansas main office. Wanted to know how long I had lived at my present address,when I told her since i bought the home in 1971 she said then where did you live before? I said I was in the US Military.
Anyway I got approved and walked out the door with my phone,this without paying anything. So I assume Sprint was being careful because I was taking their phone without paying anything.
I had been with Sprint around 20 years before leaving them last year to go with a new provider,and don't remember having such a credit inspection process. Also the guy told me Spring knew I had been a longtime customer before,but they still must run you again as a new customer.
It just took up a lot of my time and made me feel like i was really being run through the woods.
 
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It could be something to do with the number of hard pulls you have in the last 2 years. For example, chase will not approve you for the sapphire preferred, freedom, or slate card if you have more than 5 hard pulls in a 2 year span. This is something new chase introduced a few months ago, and it could be something the bank apple is using does. That would easily explain credit scores over 800 being denied.

They may not being using that exact amount of pulls, but it could easily be "x" amount of pulls = auto denial.
 
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