Further experiments with Credit cards
My cousin recently returned from a foreign country. He has never held a credit card and decided to get one. Due to the ongoing pandemic, he wanted to try something absolutely online without any paperwork. Based on my previous post, I recommended OneCard. And the story begins.
The way OneCard works is:
- You download the app
- Enter your mobile number and PAN
- OneCard fetches your Creditscore from Experian and Cibil based on your PAN and mobile number
- Approves or rejects your request based on creditscore - You cant proceed if you dont have a credit score
- Hola!
Sounds wonderful, but the problem here is with fetching credit score if you have changed the mobile number.
So my cousin has a credit score based on his transactions a few years ago, but the problem is that the phone number he used earlier is different. OC knows it is his records based on the PAN, but wont let him proceed unless he uses the same mobile number! We tried talking to OC and they said there isnt much they can do without the mobile number. We logged in to Experian and Cibil and updated the phone number to the current number in the credit score records, however OC is not able to fetch the info based; probably there is a delay in updation.
Since OC wasnt helpful, we tried with few other players including his bank. As he recently changed the account from NRE to residential, bank treats him as a new customer and cant issue a credit card for 6 months. That is so absurd. Lot of other CC issuers do not serve the area of residence. Apparantly, when you live in a Metro or tier 1 city, these credit card agents run behind you and call you every now and then, but the story is quite different in a tire 2/3. We have accepted defeat in our endeavour to get a credit card!
Everything said and done, these are the takeaways:
- Do not change mobile nummbers frequently
- Use the same number across all financial producs including PAN
- Get a credit card when you can, maybe when you live in a big city. It may get difficult later
Since we couldnt get a credit card, we started exploring other products. More on that later.