to the customer service line just a few minutes ago to get clarification. According to their terms and conditions, by providing your information required to register for an account, Revolution Money Exchange will pull a credit "snapshot" for verification purposes (and probably to see if you are a good candidate for their credit card offers). As I guessed, this is not the same as a "hard" credit check used to obtain a new line of credit, or one that would adversely affect your score in any way. Companies do this kind of credit snapshot all the time, and if you have seen your credit report lately, will probably find that every major credit card company (including the ones you already do business with), your car insurance, health insurance, mortgage company, etc do these at least annually, if not more often.

As far as the 30 point drop in FICO scoring, unless you are certain that Revolution did a "hard" credit pull (which usually requires your explicit consent), I would be careful to attribute it all to something that can't be directly proven.  Also, even one "hard" credit inquiry won't have more than a 5 point effect on your credit score (based on FICO's own system).

I would suggest that anyone with questions regarding FICO should take a look at FICO's own explanation of what "counts" and what doesn't, as well as what factors could contribute to a drop in credit score.

http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/CreditInquiries.aspx