I screwed up a credit card application this weekend. I have a precautionary security freeze onall my credit accounts (courtesy of a former workplace's computer system being compromised last year). This past weekend I applied for the AmEx Hilton HHonors Surpass in order to take advantage of the current 80K bonus offer. Well, when I went to the Experian website to generate the single-use PIN for AmEx so that AmEx would be able to pull my credit report, I must have screwed up somehow - and now Experian has me locked out. I sent Experian the requested identity verification documents on Saturday, which they should be receiving today. Does anyone know how quickly Experian typically responds to these sorts of consumer issues? I'll be traveling and out of contact later this month, so if I don't get that single-use PIN for AmEx by early next week, my credit card application will be toast (and so will any chance of earning that 80k bonus).

Why not just use the original PIN you created with the freeze?

That's what I did. But I made a fat-finger mistake entering the number on my first try, and then when I retried (using the correct PIN), the website told me I had to send verifying identity documents to Experian before I could do anything else. Very frustrating!

The good news is that I sent the ID documents on Saturday afternoon, checked today and found they had been received on Monday, and so I tried again (despite not hearing anything from Experian yet). This time the PIN worked, I got a single-use PIN for AmEx generated, and now my new credit card is on its way! So it seems Experian does fix things promptly once they receive the necessary identification documents.

I've learned my lesson, though. If in the future I want to apply for a new credit card, I'll have the security freeze temporarily lifted first, and only then fill out the online application. Much simpler that way (if a bit riskier)!

I meant you can just give the analyst the multi-use PIN.

No, that defeats the purpose of a security freeze. I don't want someone other than me to be able to unlock my account at will, which is what the original PIN allows.

They'd have to commit fraud to do that. The credit analyst isn't going to do anything to record your PIN.

I can't know that, and neither can you. I DO know that giving the credit analyst a single-use PIN to access my account allows the analyst the one-time access needed to issue the card, without any risk of unauthorized access later, so for now that's the route I prefer to take.

Most would say that OP's choice is excessive and the chances of anything untoward happening so miniscule as to be immeasurable. But, it's OP's choice, so criticizing it is pointless.