We all know to avoid Capital One credit cards like the plague because they pull all 3 credit bureaus for one credit card application. I recently saw one report which could change the attitude a bit.
The Story
Reddit user marvypoo had an (inadvertent) interesting story when applying for a Capital One credit card. He applied for the Capital One Venture – you know the one with the 40,000 point signup bonus that we’ve all been eyeing and sighing that we can’t apply for – and he accidentally hit the ‘refresh’ button on the computer while the computer was in middle of processing his application, “It will take a minute for your application to process”.
He got an automatic approval and received the card in the mail. Or rather, received the cards in the mail. Yup, Capital One took it as two separate applications and automatically approved him for two of the same card. That’s an 80,000 point signup bonus between the two.
He met the spend on both cards, and… he received both bonuses. All automated.
The kicker to the story is that he only received one-time credit pulls for the applications. They did pull all 3 bureaus, as usual, but the pulls were combined and show up as one.
Lessons Learned
Here’s some things I learned from this story:
- Capital One will combine inquiries. We previously put together a resource on which issuers combine and which don’t. We didn’t have any reports at the time on Capital One. This story indicates that they do combine. It’s still possible that the inquiry-consolidation was due to the fact that it was the same card, but different cards wouldn’t get their inquiries combined. But it’s at least an encouraging indication that it’s likely the inquiries will get combined.
- Apparently, it’s even possible to get two of the same card at the same time with Capital One. We’ve heard about such tricks with Citi and recently with Bank of America. Apparently, with Capital One it could work as well. Of course, this will all only work if the approval is instant; once a human reviews it they wouldn’t approve for two cards.
- When people talk about getting inquiries combined and about getting two of the same card from Citi or Bank of America, we usually talk about using two different browsers and sending out the applications as close together as possible. In this story, both were sent from the same browser. I’m not coming to say there’s no validity to the 2-browser idea, but at least in this case it wasn’t necessary.
- We also put together a List of Churnable Credit Cards and we wrote in regard to Capital One that it is possible to get a second identical card, even without cancelling the first one, but that you may need to wait in between. In this story he was able to get two of the same card, and in this story no wait was needed. Again, this data-point is limited to being able to get two at the same time, so it won’t actually prove that you’d be able to apply for a second card a day later or a month later.
All this info is just from one person’s experience and it’s always possible that we won’t be able to replicate it, but it’s definitely an interesting story.
Final Thoughts
I haven’t applied for any Capital One credit cards yet, but it got me looking at the possibilities. If I thought I could get two Venture cards with a 40,000 point bonus on each, I’d be applying right now. I’d probably go through two separate browsers – hey, why not? – but I’d be willing to give the 3-bureau pull for this. There’s a risk that the inquiries won’t combining, but how’s a credit card app for some adventure! Honestly, I don’t care much about the Transunion pull, so it’s more the Experian and Equifax that I’m thinking about.
I’d also consider going for two separate Capital One cards and hoping that the inquiries combine. The advantage of this approach is that even if the application needs human intervention, it may still be possible to get an approval on both cards. We need to find two good Capital One signup bonuses; other than the 40,000 point Venture there isn’t any personal card that look incredibly enticing. There are a couple nice-looking business cards and it’s possible that those will also combine inquiries with the personal.
See also Devil’s Advocate’s post Should a Capital One Card Be In Your Wallet? for lots of interesting info on Capital One and the Venture card in particular.
It’s also worth noting that I have seen some mention that you may be able to freeze one of your credit reports and still getting approved with Capital One. If I could freeze my Experian and still get approved… now, that sounds tempting.
Anyway, this is what’s going through my heard. Any advice for me? Please comment below.
Also forgot to mention, after the cap1 decisions I applied for bofa travel rewards card a few minutes after unfreezing experian…pending outcome, next day approval through email, no phone interview.
First time freezing my experian, I have 9 cards open, 7 this year, applied for venture, spark cash, and spark miles on 2 computers, 1 computer incognito and normal. First app was venture, it processed for a while and I was denied. 2nd was spark cash, instant approval. 3rd was spark miles, instant denial. same info on both apps for business. I have a venture -one currently open so maybe theres credence to cap1 only allowing 2 cards or maybe they dont approve 2 business cards. Just unfroze my experian, it was free to freeze and unfreeze, I live in IL so am suprised there wasnt a $10 fee.
Has anyone tried to pick up both flavors of the Spark Business card? There’s the Cash and the Miles version. A chat rep w/ cap1 told me they’re different products and getting one doesn’t exclude you from the other sign up bonus. He then mentioned a 30 day waiting period between cards.
I was told that today but got applied for another after I hung up anyway. Got approved last night and this afternoon…no second alert.
I have two Capital One cards, one Quicksilver and the other Spark Business. Like that Quicksilver has 1.5% cashback and the bonus after met spending with Spark Business. Not sure if I want to keep Spark since it has an annual fee. Did 2 balance transfers with Quicksilver. Have no balance on both cards. Have been trying to do another balance transfer with Quicksilver, but was told sorry for the inconvenience not available at this time, something like that, not sure why. If I’m not qualified then why show me the promo.
I got the same error today.
I posted this question in the combined pulls post, but I’m hoping to find any data points on Capital One combining personal and business cards. I’m looking at the Venture and the Spark (Business).
For anyone reading this far down the comments, I tried the Refresh glitch on a CO Venture this morning with no luck.
I was instantly approved for a CapOne Venture and VentureOne that I applied for within an hour of each other using different browsers, Chrome and Firefox both in incognito mode, respectively. Each was approved with credit lines of $10k, and I called and confirmed the bonus offers.
Furthermore, I have good reason to believe these inquiries were combined since I only received credit alerts from CreditSesame and Credit Karma within a few minutes of the first application for the Venture but before the second application for the VentureOne. After the second application for the VentureOne, I never received any credit monitoring alerts, which I assume I should’ve received had the inquiries not combined.
Yeah, we’ve seen numerous reports that they get combined. Interesting that it worked even an hour apart. No reason to pull the trigger within a minute.
Awesome, Elliot. Update us if you do see a second pull!
I have the “Captial One Professional No Hassle Rewards” card, a predecessor to the Venture card. I have had the card over fifteen years and it does have the restrictions that I mentioned in doing a redemption. It also calls the process Purchase Eraser same as the Venture and I assumed they both used the same software platform for erasing purchases. I apologize if I am wrong, but I did read that the newer Venture had the same restrictions – maybe they changed them or maybe what I read was wrong.
I have no wish to spread misinformation. If they got rid of the 15K, 35K, and 60K thresholds for Venture and went for a straight 100 to 1 point to dollar ratio, that would be good news for Venture cardholders.
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Although I criticize Capital One for their redemption hassles, I will praise them for being one of the first credit card issuers to have a no fee for foreign transactions credit card.
Thanks, I didn’t think you were trying to spread misinformation. From what I gather, the Venture doesn’t have these issues. If that’s true, maybe you’d be able to product-change yourself to the Venture?
I called the Rewards 800 number and they were able to convert my rewards program on No Hassle Rewards credit card to the Venture program, without changing/converting the credit card. (I have a long history on this card) So that means I no longer have the restrictions of the reward tiers and will be able to do straight 100 to 1 redemptions. I was told that partial amounts work too; that is if the expense is $700 and you have 60,000 miles, you can use miles to pay for part and only pay the remaining $100. So this good news for me.
Awesome! Thanks for confirming that. Now I think I’ll try out apping for CO some time soon.
Just read the comments in the travel codex link and the last comment on there says this has been fixed and you now can redeem for any point ammount. I have the venture card as well as the cap 1 sparks card. I think the sparks card is a better option since u get 2% cash back and can book trips with cash. If I try and cash out venture miles I would only get 1% cash back instead of 2% for travel. Venture does have it beat on sign up bonus though with its $400 in travel bonus compared to $300 bonus on sparks after minimum spend and adding authorized user.
Thanks for clearing that up. Seems that walterj (above) is referring to an older problem that CO had, which has been fixed.
For redeeming points, Capital One Rewards is vastly inferior to Barclay Arrival.
It is so awful and awkward that I would say it is nearly a scam.
If you are happy with losing 50% of the value, you can get a check or statement credit; that is easy.
But to get full value is hard.
You must redeem exactly 15,000, 35K or 60K, above 60K is variable, a penney a point. But the killer is that a partial redemption is not allowed, if the travel cost is more than the corresponding point amount, no redemption is allowed.
For example, you have a $601 travel expense, and 60K points, no redemption allowed.
If you had 30K points and two travel expenses, say $110 and $130, each would cost 15K points for a total of 30K points losing $60 of value. (40 + 20)
If you have a travel expense of $151, it would cost 35000 points.
and so on, it really sucks!
Wow, sounds pretty bad. I don’t think I’d go for the card, if you are right.
I have to look into this again, but from what I read by Devil’s Advocate (http://travelcodex.com/2014/10/capital-one-card-wallet/), he writes exactly the opposite, that CO is easier to redeem. He writes there’s no minimum amount, so accordingly you should be able to redeem any precise amount that you want.
Are you talking about the CO Venture?