{"id":8971,"date":"2024-01-08T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=8971"},"modified":"2024-01-07T17:01:02","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T00:01:02","slug":"the-comenity-shopping-cart-trick-a-lesson-in-probing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/08\/the-comenity-shopping-cart-trick-a-lesson-in-probing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Comenity Shopping Cart Trick: A Lesson in Probing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Comenity Bank<\/a> probably doesn’t qualify as a FinTech given that they’ve been around since the 1980s and have major co-branded card<\/a> contracts like AAA<\/a>, Victoria’s Secret<\/a>, the Texans NFL card<\/a>, and the Houzz (?) Mastercard<\/a>, but they do provide an object lesson in how FinTechs and some banks can provide unique backdoors into the financial system. Specifically, today we’ll focus on the Comenity Shopping Cart Trick<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Shopping Cart Trick<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It’s probably already familiar to seasoned churners that sometimes you’ll get a better offer for an airline credit card when you’re making a dummy booking<\/a> or when you’re applying for a card from an in-flight application<\/a>. What’s probably less obvious is that sometimes your account or credit profile will be impacted differently based on how you apply too. Specifically:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Comenity co-branded cards, if you add a dummy item or two to your shopping cart and then apply for the card during check-out, they’ll almost never perform a hard-pull of your credit report. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course if you have bad credit or no credit, this is an enticing proposition. For most of you reading the blog, at face value there’s not much there other than as a mental insight into bank processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lesson<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The public facing side of credit cards, like lifetime language, sign-up bonus terms, and which card has the worst design<\/a>, aren’t the only aspects of a card and its impact on your finances. Instead, credit reporting, unregulated debit payments<\/a>, and pseudo-loan like products<\/a> play a role in the immediate enduring value of a card too. Always be probing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happy Monday!<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Pictured: SideShowBob233 attempts the Fluz shopping cart trick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Comenity Bank probably doesn’t qualify as a FinTech given that they’ve been around since the 1980s and have major co-branded card contracts like AAA, Victoria’s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[54,12,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-credit-cards","category-ms-hints","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8971"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8976,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8971\/revisions\/8976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}