It is known that when you apply for the Apple card, a soft pull is done on your credit by Goldman Sachs. Based on the information and if approved, you’ll get an offer outlining stuff such as credit limit and interest rates. If you accept, the standard hard pull is done and the card is yours.

Except it appears the card is yours before the hard pull is actually done. The only reason I know this is that when I had temporarily lifted the freeze on my reports in order to apply, a credit report alert informed me that a hard pull was later attempted while my credit report was frozen.

I applied at 8 p.m. of the day that I previously had specified as the start day for lifting the freeze with the end day being the following day. Little did I know that Transunion’s definition of the end day is one minute before that day.

On top of it, the time zone specified is CT, not the PT that I live in, which effectively reduces the window to nearly two hours, until 10 p.m. The supposedly real-time alert that I received (and didn’t pay much attention back then) arrived at 10:10 p.m.

How is that for fun?

For the record, the above is in no way an endorsement of intentionally attempting to do so in order to bypass the hard pull. I am personally fine with getting a hard inquiry whenever I apply for credit (which is not often).