The Story of How an Old Navy Credit Card Saved My Life

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Sometimes you hear a story so touching that it changes your life forever. Sometimes it’s your story and sometimes it’s the story of someone else, but it’s one that changes you. When you think of a touching story, you think of positivity, but it’s not always the case. In this case, it’s the story of an old acquaintance that has touched me. It’s the story of how her Old Navy credit card saved her life. When she first mentioned that the store with low prices and fairly on trend clothing perfect for families with small kids who prefer to shop on a budget thanks to their inability to stop growing out of everything every 5 minutes saved her life, I imagined that she was caught in a shooting and her card stopped a bullet.

It’s not quite that dramatic (#sorrynotsorry) but the truth is that her Old Navy credit card did save her life in a profound manner. It was during a Black Friday shopping expedition. It was early in the morning and she was freshly divorced from a man who treated her poorly and made her life miserable. She was liberated and she was happy for the first time in a long time. As a pediatrician, she had a good job and made a nice living for herself and her two kids, but she decided that morning to go ahead and apply for an Old Navy credit card while in store for the additional savings it would provide her while she shopped. She was not at all worried about ruining her credit, considering she was fully capable of using it responsibly and paying her balance in full each month as she did with her other cards. She had great credit and had never made a late payment in her life. So when she was denied credit, she immediately began to question the salesperson.

She was certain it was just a mistake on the part of the sales associate entering her name or social incorrectly, but imagine her shock and surprise when she received a letter in the mail 30 days later telling her that she was declined for credit because of her poor credit history. Upon calling her credit bureau, she was informed that she’d been the victim of identity theft on behalf of her ex. He’d been applying for cards and credit using her name and social and not paying any of them off for over a year. She had no idea since he was using his own address, his numbers and keeping things hidden from her.

The process of making a case against her ex and getting her credit history cleaned up has not been an easy one, but fortunately he hadn’t been at it so long that she wasn’t able to prove everything to her benefit. If she hadn’t applied for that card, she said the next time she would have applied for credit would have been when she sold her house and bought a new one. But by then it would have been too late. She was able to slowly get her credit cleaned up thanks to that Old Navy credit card application denial so that she could get her life back in order before it ruined her financially.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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