American Express never forgets. 20+ years after declaring bankruptcy and I'm still not able to get an AmEx card, because they have their own records. (I have an 820+ FICO score.)

>American Express never forgets. 20+ years after declaring bankruptcy and I'm still not able to get an AmEx card, because they have their own records. (I have an 820+ FICO score.)

I can confirm this.

I'm 30+ years out from getting a couple thousand written off by Amex and 20+ years out from bankruptcy (a single "debtor" who was the plaintiff in a lawsuit against me, and during which no loans or credit cards were defaulted on) and American Express still won't do business with me, even after being their employee (and having to pay back every penny that was written off before they'd issue me a corporate card) for several years.

I'd also note that American Express does not report payment histories on their charge products to the credit bureaus. But they do have a very long memory.

Edit: I'd note that I still had a 700+ credit score within the 10 year window after bankruptcy, and my score is in the mid 800s.

I suspect Visa, MasterCard, and a number of other banks and credit unions would be keen to offer good loan conditions to a person with a demonstrated income and 800+ FICO score.

I'm not from the US so could you explain how credit unions deal with these things? Are they more sympathetic than banks or do they operate as banks-except-in-name?

For average needs a credit union is a bank with another name. They occasionally have better rates, because there isn't a profit motive for the credit union since it's member owned. If you have special needs beyond checking/savings and home/car loans a credit union may not be able to offer the same level of support as a bank. The quality of credit unions varies wildly, especially on the tech side.