Barclay UPromise Question

[creditisbetter2]

Hello All,

It's been a while since i've posted here.  I have had my Barclay Itunes card for years now and my limit is $6,700. I wanted to apply for the Upromise so that I can put something towards my student loans.  I applied and was approved even though some of my CC have high balances.  The limit I was approved for was $500 and that seems like an insult more than anything.  I called CS and asked for a higher limit because with such a low limit, I hardly see the purpose of using it with my other Barclay card having more than enough for me to use.  They offered to move some of my other available credit to this new card but he wouldn't budge on increasing the limit and I don't know if I am ok with that.  Question to you is should I activate the card or leave it as is and not use it until the limit is where I want it to be?  I know that I am a small person in the grand scheme of things but my logic behind applying also is that I have been very good with my other Barclay card and I assumed that maybe my long standing relationship with them would somehow help with a higher limit for this new card.  At any rate, it's a very good promotional rate of 0% interest for 12 months that I wouldn't mind taking advantage of but there's not a whole lot that I would want to buy with a limit being so low.  I am leaning towards just throwing it in a drawer and forgetting about it but I'd like some of your thoughts.

[Kenny]

Why not transfer the limit and close the other?

[creditisbetter2]

Transferring the $500 to the other card?  Or transferring the $6700 to the upromise card? I couldn't remember what the rule of thumb was for closing accounts.  I know with this one being so new, I don't think that it'll hurt my score if I close it now but I'd need more clarification on that.  Ideally I wanted to the upromise card to help pay down student loans and the itunes has it's benefits so that's why initially I wanted the separate card.

[tray]

First off Congrats on getting this card as I am interested in getting this card myself, in my opinion this card with its rewards structure is 10 times better than itunes, I do not know if you owe any balance on the itunes card but I would transfer the cl from the itunes card to the upromise card, you will be able to transfer as much of a  cl as you want.  The end of last year I closed my apple card with Barclay's and transferred the whole cl that was available and was able to do this over to my B&N card without any problems.

[ElCamino]

My personal experience with Barclay's is that they are very hesitant to award additional credit, especially if you have not seen a dramatic increase in income or have added additional credit to your file from another company/bank.

Your best bet is to shift a portion of your iTunes CL over to your UPromise card.

A few things to be wary of with the UPromise Card:

1. The APR is going to be tremendous, so make sure you PIF. Otherwise, any of the benefits you get from the card will end up as net losses.

2. You'll get the most return on your purchases if you make them via the UPromise website using the UPromise card.

3. It takes a while for your earnings to appear, so if you're one of those people who checks their rewards balance every day, it's going to frustrate you.

That's about it really.

If you're serious about using the UPromise card to pay down student loans, then perhaps you might be interested in PCing your iTunes card to the Sallie Mae Mastercard. I believe it can also be linked to your UPromise account.

[Joebunaga]

Sallie Mae can be linked, and from what I saw you can move the rewards into student loans(I haven't actually done that, just read about it).