Great post guys! When I moved from USA, I also had to start from scratch. Even though I had Citi bank's cards (totalling $40000 of credit in USA) and asked them to cut me some slack in Canada, they refused to do so. I was using one of those TD credit cards that's secured through your TFSA, frozen for 2 years. But 6 months later along came Walmart and President's choice cards. They were waiting at store entrances practically imploring to apply and also gave me complementary shopping coupons and cash backs. Walmart was initially for $5000 and doubled it in 6 months. Presidents choice was for $3000. Both are excellent in rewarding. For phones, I went with Wind, never paid a penny for my phone, signed a 3 years contract! Mortgage came along after 2 years of my stay in Canada so my credit got built to a decent point. Sill needed a mortgage broker to get a mortgage from my own f@#$%^ Bank(!!!?????), loosers they want to pay for the broker let them pay and the broker was way nicer (and definitely more knowledgeable) to me than my bank's personal banking associate! Now I hold 5 credit cards of which 3 I don't use at all, didn't know why I bought it! Almost every single day when I get a mail from these companies like Canadian tire and AMEX to avail a preapproved $X credit card, my attitude goes only numb because when I wanted they weren't there now they all want to wait at my doorstep. Pretty ironic!
PS: Ironic#2, misplaced mails (to a western name, no offense!) keep coming to my address almost every month at least once or twice. Didn't care for it the first 6 months, then it really irked that I want to see why would someone not care to change their address for such a long time and opened the damned mail(s) anyways. They were all mails from collection agencies. Didn't want to be judgemental, but all I'm saying is no one should be judgemental for that matter sake, in this case the credit card companies!