There’s an interesting Reddit report from wiivile that Capital One now has an option within their signup process to change the offer for those not qualified for the regular landing page offer. The system will pop up with a message stating that you aren’t eligible for the offer requested, but you can get a low credit limit, higher APR, and…wait for it…no signup bonus.
Reader Matthew got this with a Spark business card and the other report is with a personal Venture card; seems to affect all. It’s not clear if this new pop up is showing for those who previously would have been approved, or if they are indeed expanding to approve more people by making this offer with no bonus. Ostensibly, if your credit isn’t as good, you are a greater risk and aren’t ‘worth’ the signup bonus.
You can view the full image here.
FWIW, Discover does this too.
My discover it was approved with no bonus back when I started churning.
Yea I had this happen to me when I signed up for the savor card a few months back. Pretty annoying.
PSA: Do the pre-qual page first. I was under the impression it is somewhat reliable. 3-5 years ago, I would check, and get the good cards they offered. These days I’m only pre-qual’d for the junk cards, so I know not to apply.
What a way to waste three HPs. This is such an a**hole move from them.
“Ostensibly, if your credit isn’t as good, you are a greater risk and aren’t ‘worth’ the signup bonus.”
i think this is more about them finding a way to deny the signup bonus for those of us with great credit but who get too many bonuses via too many new accounts. kinda like AMEX’s popup, but they do hard pulls so they can see your behavior amongst other banks, not just with their own products.
Or more likely, those with great credit who never keep a balance. Capone is turning into an asshole of the CC world. Imagine a restaurant that kicks you out of dinner if you don’t order expensive booze.
I applied for the Spark Cash, and I was offered an MSR of $5k instead of $4.5k. Accepted.
People who would accept the worse terms without bonus and with higher APY would be those who are really in need of a poor credit line. Maybe CapitalOne is targeting on such customers for interest revenue, even with their high-end products now.
I had a similar experience applying for the Capital One Savor One (because I had forgotten to unlock my credit reports, rookie mistake) and for me, yes, there were buttons at the bottom of the page to either accept or decline the offer, and no new account appeared on my credit report. (There was also no hard pull, again, because of the lock)
Not sure what business model they uses, a year after bankruptcy, I kept getting capital one offers for lowest tier CC. Since venture was the only one with bonus, so I applied, got approved 50k bonus with 5K limit, this was in Dec 19
So basically the sign up bonuses are a crapshoot now.
RIP the good ole days
In the past, Capital One would just reject you. If you’re rejected, you’re obviously not getting the signup bonus. So it’s basically the same.
It’s not necessarily the same. It is also possible that in the past, CapitalOne would just approve you. We are not able to tell which case it is, despite whatever wording CapitalOne made in public. If you’d like to believe whatever banks and companies tell you, you should think they are cutting some benefits and adding fees in order to better serve customers as they say in their emails.
I agree that it’s possible that it’s worse now for some people. But in general, Capital One already had a reputation for rejecting a huge number of people. I already wasn’t going to try applying for Capital One cards, so this change has no effect on me.
I wonder if it is really about accepting apps from the less qualified, though. More like refusing sub for those that are usually qualified and the SUB is only for those that are exceptionally qualified.