Credit card appication fee/"funds available"?

[CorbinsMama]

Yesterday I applied for a credit card through Orchard Bank/HSBC. They asked for a bank routing number, account number, and check number to charge $19 to make sure that we had funds available.

Their office is closed so I haven't reached anyone yet, but I don't understand why they need to know if we have funds available for a credit card that they say we have been approved for.

I am not a stupid person, but I feel like I made a dumb mistake here. I want to cancel it entirely as soon as I can reach someone.

Background: We settled almost all of our debts last year for about 50 cents on the dollar. Not great for our credit, but it was the best option for us at the time. Now we are trying to rebuild our credit and get a credit card. I feel like I really screwed up now.

[nolansmummy]

i don't remember having to give all that information when we got our orchard bank card, i would call and find out all the details of the card, especially since they have some that have a lot of annual and monthlyfees and matinence fees .

[asianyoushi]

weird... never had to give that info when we had orchard bank credit cards............ call them up monday.....first thing in the morning, hope u didnt get ur identity stolen.....

[zersha]

That is normal for this card. The $19 if the application fee.

We have this card and it is a good card for rebuilding credit. The other subprime cards like First Premier are terrible.

If you don't have good credit and are trying to rebuild, your only other option would be secured cards. They usually don't have all the fees of unsecured cards for people with bad credit.

But just so you know, it's really not a scam. The $19 is normal for this particular orchard card. The cards for people with better credit don't have this fee.

[CorbinsMama]

Thank you for all the replies. Zersha, I have since found more info and see that the $19 is normal, as you say. Unfortunately, one of the posts I read about is that the persone was approved and paid the $19, but never received their card. They got bills, but no card! I'll just keep on top of it and make sure we get the card.

[angelcollector1]

I also worked to rebuild my credit by applying and paying the fee you did. I didn't receive my card from them but it wasn't their error, it was mine- I moved and their policy is to not forward it. When I called them, they cancelled the original card, changed my demographics and mailed me a new card which I received about 2 weeks later. No problems since then, had it since January.