From what I have seen, consistency matters more than intensity here — it sounds obvious written down, but it took a while to land.
If it helps, the useful platforms let you talk to someone before asking for a card — that has been consistent for me across a few different platforms.
Everything that worked for me in the end:
- After one bad experience I walked away from anyone who pushed to move off-platform straight away until I actually trusted the person
- Early on I started to referenced something specific from the profile in the first line, and it became second nature
- Took a break whenever it started to feel like admin, which mattered more than I expected
- Every time I never used my main debit card on a platform I had just found, no exceptions
- Something I learned the hard way — I checked how long the platform had actually been running
For what it is worth, a bad week is a bad week, not evidence about the platform — happy to be argued with on that one. datelink.online