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@maiden_girl wrote:
@medo wrote:How hard would you say it would be to get a Citi card? You must have excellent credit or would they work with fair credit?
Thanks.
Citi is very picky. When I applied, I had a 714 FICO score and it was denied due to too many inquires but I notice many college students here end up getting a card with little or no history so I have no idea.
All prime banks are picky. As for getting denied for too many inquiries, almost all banks will reject you if you do have too many inquiries. Every bank has their threshold limit and it also depends on how thick / thin and how good / bad your file is overall. Amex rejected me for having too many recent inquiries (5 in the past year). Therefore Amex is picky too.
There's a difference between having a thin file (little or no history) and having a risky file (too many inquiries is an indicator of higher risk).
College cards in general are more forgiving for thin files, not bad ones. This is true for most banks that offer college cards.
@longtimelurker wrote:
@MonkeyBelly wrote:
I've had a Citi card for 12+ years. It's really nothing special.
It's often not all that meaningful to make general statements about big banks. Chase, Citi, BoA, Barclays etc, have a fairly large set of cards that change over time. Some (entry level) probably are fairly useless for the majority of people, others might be much more tailored to a particular spending pattern, and so offer great value to some and little to others. This is true of nearly all banks, Chase, Barclays, Amex etc have cards that make little sense if you cannot make use of the benefits.
Offerings also evolve as issuers compete with each other, so a 12 year old probably doesn't seem good compared to what is offered today. As others have said, Citi does have some good cards. The Forward card (sadly now only in a student version) is great value, for AA miles, the Citi cards with bonuses is the way to go, and, for now, the TYP 5% is really hard to beat. With reasonable care, you can get several hundred $s a month in cash back, or more for travel when used with Premier/Prestige.
This doesn't mean that Citi has a card that is good for you, but then Chase/Amex/BoA etc don't have cards that are good for everyone either.
+1
@maiden_girl wrote:
@scottwagnon
The inquiries were from 2010. The denial made no sense. I applied last year and this year. Same reason.
it's probably a combination of reasons.
If you can tell me more about ur history, I can try to help, but at this point your best option is to first try calling their EO. If that doesn't work, lower your util ratio, and let your account age and uou could always try again if you want, or just move on with other cards. There's plenty of options anyhow.
try calling that number on monday and hopefully they can help you. how long ago was your app? if its >30 days you will have to re-apply.
best of luck!
they were much more help to me than regular CSRs.
@longtimelurker wrote:
@MonkeyBelly wrote:
I've had a Citi card for 12+ years. It's really nothing special.
It's often not all that meaningful to make general statements about big banks. Chase, Citi, BoA, Barclays etc, have a fairly large set of cards that change over time. Some (entry level) probably are fairly useless for the majority of people, others might be much more tailored to a particular spending pattern, and so offer great value to some and little to others. This is true of nearly all banks, Chase, Barclays, Amex etc have cards that make little sense if you cannot make use of the benefits.
Offerings also evolve as issuers compete with each other, so a 12 year old probably doesn't seem good compared to what is offered today. As others have said, Citi does have some good cards. The Forward card (sadly now only in a student version) is great value, for AA miles, the Citi cards with bonuses is the way to go, and, for now, the TYP 5% is really hard to beat. With reasonable care, you can get several hundred $s a month in cash back, or more for travel when used with Premier/Prestige.
This doesn't mean that Citi has a card that is good for you, but then Chase/Amex/BoA etc don't have cards that are good for everyone either.
It's often not all that meaningful to make general statements about other people's personal experiences either.
@MonkeyBelly wrote:
@longtimelurker wrote:
@MonkeyBelly wrote:
I've had a Citi card for 12+ years. It's really nothing special.
It's often not all that meaningful to make general statements about big banks. Chase, Citi, BoA, Barclays etc, have a fairly large set of cards that change over time. Some (entry level) probably are fairly useless for the majority of people, others might be much more tailored to a particular spending pattern, and so offer great value to some and little to others. This is true of nearly all banks, Chase, Barclays, Amex etc have cards that make little sense if you cannot make use of the benefits.
Offerings also evolve as issuers compete with each other, so a 12 year old probably doesn't seem good compared to what is offered today. As others have said, Citi does have some good cards. The Forward card (sadly now only in a student version) is great value, for AA miles, the Citi cards with bonuses is the way to go, and, for now, the TYP 5% is really hard to beat. With reasonable care, you can get several hundred $s a month in cash back, or more for travel when used with Premier/Prestige.
This doesn't mean that Citi has a card that is good for you, but then Chase/Amex/BoA etc don't have cards that are good for everyone either.
It's often not all that meaningful to make general statements about other people's personal experiences either.
I like Citi.
I get that it isn't really well liked here and I understand that because not 100% of everyone is going to like a bank but I've had my Forward for almost 5 years now and I love the 5x points I get on dining, fast food, movie theaters and Amazon orders. And the 2 or 3 times I've had to call CSR they have all been very nice and very knowledgable regarding my questions and I've never had any problems with them. And they keep dropping my APR (on my last stamement it dropped another .25 to 11.24%). So yeah, I'm glad to be a card member with them.
@youngandcreditwrthy wrote:
Well,
Does Citi even have a true cashback card??
Something other than lose lame ever-value changing TY points?
Well, depends on what "true" means here!
As has been posted before, you get a bad rate for cash back or statement credit, but... you get the full 1:1 on student loan/mortgage payments.
And why that matters is when you call to redeem, Citi just asks which bank to make it out to, and, presumably to avoid liability issues, they sent the check to YOU so you can send in on. So, for example, you can ask for the check to made out to Bank of America, and when it arrives, you just deposit it in your own Bank of America account. So cash back made complex, but it works well.
TYP have been devalued over the past, but lots of other programs have done the same, so it's always a risk.
And, once again, if you don't have the 5% TYP card, you are missing out on some great earnings. But hopefully people's dislike of Citi will keep that going longer!