Next step after CapOne and HSBC Orchard/BB

[Amy26]

As far as I know, I haven't seen anybody getting any other cards aside from the hooters one ( at least that I've read here in the threads). I think it is possible to get a Barclay's card ... the last time I applied for one I called the reconsideration line and they told me to keep rebuilding my credit with my existing lines and try again another time. She said they wanted to see some mileage between my discharge and my rebuilding habits. At the one year mark, most of my credit scores are either in the 700's or closing in on it... so, hopefully you should be somewhere in that neighborhood. I think within another 6-12 months I should be able to can the orchard card and get something a little less.... undesirable. Right now I have the capital one card, HSBC Best Buy MC and Hooters. The hooters and the capital one cards are quite fine for me and I'm happy with them. I wouldn't mind just using those for quite some time. Capital One is doing regular increases and Hooters just raised my limit after a year. Its the HSBC card that I don't particularly care for. Its only a 500 limit and mine has a 39 dollar fee on it. They also told me they do not do limit increases (at least not by request). So, if you don't have a hooters card perhaps you can try that. But otherwise... we just have to wait.

[tobee43]

CC...yes, we tried but did get both ....cap one did give us one

cap one gave us 2000 interest free for 10 months then a whopping 22% thereafter
orchard one of us no fee 1500 at 12.99%
my orchard was 1300 but i had to pay $39 and it's at 12%


our plan, if they didn't give us the cards was to go to the credit union and see if they would give us a "secured" card. that was why we opened two bank accounts pre bk...one at a small community bank and one at a local credit union.

it's worth a shot to see if your bank would work with you on a secured card...after all they have nothing to lose and as long as they report to the ca's you should be good!

[CCsAreEvil]

So, I'm around the 1 year mark for post-BK and discharge, continuing to re-build and such. We "post-BK folk" obviously have limited options in re-building credit.

CapOne never approved me (tried 4 times throughout the year), but I did BK on them. There are instances of people getting approved by them even when they included CapOne in their BK, but I think that must be the exception to the rule.

Fortunately, Orchard approved me ($300 teaser limit). However, the annual is coming up, and for my account, they charge $59 (*shudder*). Even though one of the positives is they report to all 3 CRAs, paying that $59 the 2nd time around doesn't seem too appealing. Has anyone been able to reduce or remove the annual fee?

I'm going to assume that Orchard will not remove/lower the annual fee... so now I'm looking at what my options are for the "next step" in re-building. Are there any national CC lenders besides the initial HSBC (Orchard/BestBuy) or CapOne to switch to next?

Since I have some money saved in the bank, I suppose another option would be to obtain a secured CC line of $1k or $2.. but of course, as long as there are no fees attached. As usual, could care less what the interest rate is.

Thoughts?