Discover® Motiva Card

This stuff really gives me a headache.  You read through here and some people with low 600 score get approved and others with over 700 get denied.  There must be something else to it.   I have spent hours looking at all this and am afraid to apply for any account because I don't want the hard hit they tell me is so bad but if you don't try you will never know for sure.  I did the simulater and since I own my home and owe no mortgage my score is 19 points lower than if I owed 100,000 ??  My car is also paid for and that lowers my score even more ?? My friends mother who is worth well over $10,000,000 has a paid for home in one of the most upscale neighbor hoods in our city was checking out at a Dillards and the clerk told her she could save 20% if she would open an account. She figured open an account save 20% then pay in full when the bill arrives.  They ran her information at the store and she was denied ??  Because she owes nobody. Moral is  they want give you credit unless you have credit and they want give you credit if you are using to much of what they give you !!

Excalty one year after Bankruptcy ch 7discharge, CK score 657, approved for $1000.00. I was suprised myself. However, I did serious rebuilding starting w my credit union secure credit card and secure loan (paid off), and an orchard cc that i kept very low balance on. Also, I chatted w a Discover csr and was told they wanted to see one year of good credit use. It may have helped that years ago, I had a discover card that I had a good standing on when I closed it. Based on all that, I gave it a try and was approved. My bk7 disch was on 6/29/2010 and i applied n got approved on 6/30/2011. Personally, I do not care for hard inquiries, I have about 26 inq on my equifax. I don't advise anyone not to care about them but I just don't. I am not planning on making any major purchases or getting any loans, I figure the inquiries at most would be off my report in 2 years. Btw, I have about 10 inqs that will be off my reports in Sept 2011.  

Approved for $1500 on 6/1/2011.  Credit Karma rated chances as POOR.  CK score 654.  9% debt to income ratio.  No lates.

I was approved on 6/24/11 for a $2500 limit. Credit Karma had rated my chances of approval for this card as GOOD. My C Karma score was 706 (764 VantageScore). I had 17% open credit utilization, 2% debt-to-income ratio, 1 derogatory remark  (bankruptcy 8 years ago), and 4 years/5 months avg. age of credit lines. My report card scores were A's on everything except for a C for avg. age of credit lines and a B for derogatory marks. The online application took 2 minutes to fill out and 1 minute to approve. I did have to call a service rep to finalize the account set-up (for security), but that only took a few minutes too. The initial APR is 3.99% for 15 months then goes to 22%. 

692 FICO, 35% debt utilization, no negatives in the last 5 years and only one 30 day late in the last 7, 6% DTI ratio (for real) and I was declined. Go figure.