I have the dividends card and when I click on the credit increase button sometimes it tells me I am preappoved and gives me a choice to accept or decline. That does not give me a hard inquiry. I think it gives a hard inquiry if the preapproved message does not pop up and you request anyway. As I got more history and my neg. items got older, then cli became more frequent (every few months) and larger. I sometimes received cli automatically, but that was back in 2000. Starting in 2002 I just hit the cli button on the website and accepted all the preapproved offers.
