How a billing system changed me!

I have always prided myself on my excellent credit. The last time I checked my credit it was an even 800. Which is an amazing score. So, it's Christmas and I try all year to not use credit cards too much. I don't want to get into debt now that we have crawled our way out of it. I went into a nice store to get some clothes for my children for Christmas. At the register she asked if I would like to apply for their card and get a 10% discount. I said, "absolutely." We have very few credit cards and the last time I checked we had really good credit. 

Oops. In the last 2 years we have had lots of major hospital visits. I have done our bills for the last 20 years and have done an excellent job, if I must say. Well, the bills have been piling up quickly. And I was feeling like I was swimming in quicksand. I couldn't keep up with all the different bills for all the 3 different people who have been to different doctors, cat scans, orthopedics, orthodontics, hospital radiologists, university radiologists and so on. 

I stood in this line so confident that I had this. Their billing system at the store was very efficient. They had me pull out my drivers license and used that information to pull a credit score. Then they had me talk to an operator on the phone (which the associate told me never happens...ha!) only to find out I was not approved. What? Ok, that's ok. I had the money to pay for my presents so I did and I left. The store sent me a letter later on telling me that I had insufficient income to debt. This cracks me up. They added more information on a second page.

I pay my bills and I pay on time. The reason they listed for me not getting my account with them was too many people looking into my account (not sure how I control that), lack of bank revolving information, lack of revolving account information, lack of installment loan information and my medicals that are more than 30 days past due. Ok, so what you are telling me is I don't have enough "credit" that I am using to allow me to use your "credit". Wow. I'm just stunned. We have 3 credit cards. I have one department store card that I pay off when it's used monthly. I have used it consistently for the last 3 months and paid it off every month. We have one paid off home hardware store (and was just paid off recently). Then we have one discount store card that we put our gas on and pay off monthly. 

So, we are being punished because we don't carry a balance and pay off every obligation monthly. Wow. Guess it's a good thing we really didn't need to use credit. We have no car note either. We only have our regular monthly bills. Our house note, water, electric, health insurance, insurance, property taxes, gas, groceries, phone and internet. Shouldn't this make us a better candidate? Dave Ramsey says it's better to have a fico score of 0 because it means you are paying cash for everything. Interesting thinking. I'm not sure he's wrong. If I need to carry lots of debt to keep getting credit. I'll pass. Thank you very much.

Anyone else had a similar experience?

I am participating in a blogger campaign by Bucks2Blog for Recurring
Billing Software and was compensated. However, the views and opinions are
my own.