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To keep the 5% gas cash back and to avoid the annual fee for my Cash Rewards VISA, I gave in and opened a money market savings account with PenFed. I took a hard pull for the new account. This was a few days from the card’s first b-day and a matter of weeks before my last inquiry reaches a year. Bummer.
So here’s the deal: I was hoping PenFed would give me a preapproved CLI offer at the end of this quarter. Then I had plans to request CLIs in January from all my lenders who hadn’t granted one by then.
Now I don’t know whether I should call back this week and request a CLI on the Cash Rewards card using the same hard pull. Or perhaps I should wait to see if I get a new year’s offer, hoping the whole time that if I get nothing, PenFed can use the October inquiry close to the rumored 90-day limit in January?
Are there any disadvantages to asking for the CLI now? Any advantages to waiting it out for an offer?
In closing, PenFed is weird.
Welcome to the board. In my experience with them (Sep 2012 to now), the 90 credit pull rule is only slightly accurate. I got my credit card over a year ago, and apped for an auto loan a week later (same pull). When I apped for another car lona back in August, and soon after, I got the news that my gas card would soon have the fee if I did not have a qualifying product. So, being in the 90 day window, I asked to open the checking accountusing the same pull from less than 90 days ago. She explained to me that anything apps after 30 days from the initial hard pull MAY receive another hard pull, even though the computer makes the decision to use the 90 day rule or to pull a new one. Frustrated, I asked to speak to a supervisor who confirmed the same. It was about 40 days since my car loan app. So I apped for a checking account since all I had was a savings account, and I was hard pulled. I told her since I took a hard pull already, put my card in for a credit limit increase from $12k to $15k. That was completed and approved, but that is another frustrating story (shell account created, opened with new credit line as an account and closed within a week and reported to credit bureau and dropped my average age of acounts and score). So if you ask for an increase, make sure the rep knows how to do it. I called them to have the new account that they mistakenly created and reported to the credit bureaus removed, but nonetheless, it was a pain. Hope this helps.
Sounds like I should try sooner than later. Has anyone here successfully reused an inquiry that was 60–90 days old?