topic Re: Citi Prestige denial in Credit Card Applications

Citi Prestige denial

ntenseone — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 07:41:56 GMT

I have done a lot of reading/research and studying my feelings about whether or not to apply for my goal card and at the end I decided, "Why not. Let's see what happens."

Well, I was declined w/ the 7-10 day message.

I've seen some others get coached through recon and I was prepared for this to happen, so I want to make that recon call, but I have never had to do this with Citi before, so I wanted to check with you all and see what advice you may have.

My score ranges from 684-710

Util @ 22%

AAoA 1.6yrs

100% payment history

0 derogs

4/9 HP, depending on where I look

Income 130-ish

7/24

Some of the approval stories I've been reading were with WAY higher ?/24 or WAY lower income, etc., so I figured I'd just see where the chips landed. I've got some larger purchases coming this month and my util will look bad for a short time, not to mention one of these purchases could completely clear the SUB by itself which I figured would be helpful to be able to get this card now and have the SUB handled immediately, so it seemed like a reasonable time to apply. My scores were 756-770 about 60 days ago, but we bought a new car and opened a couple other accounts, so that obviously didn't help. I should have applied then, but I wasn't ready to pull the trigger at that point. Oh well.

Any recon advice I could get would be appreciated.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

CreditCrusader — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 09:51:34 GMT

@ntenseone wrote:
I have done a lot of reading/research and studying my feelings about whether or not to apply for my goal card and at the end I decided, "Why not. Let's see what happens."
Well, I was declined w/ the 7-10 day message.

I've seen some others get coached through recon and I was prepared for this to happen, so I want to make that recon call, but I have never had to do this with Citi before, so I wanted to check with you all and see what advice you may have.

My score ranges from 684-710
Util @ 22%
AAoA 1.6yrs
100% payment history
0 derogs
4/9 HP, depending on where I look
Income 130-ish
7/24

Some of the approval stories I've been reading were with WAY higher ?/24 or WAY lower income, etc., so I figured I'd just see where the chips landed. I've got some larger purchases coming this month and my util will look bad for a short time, not to mention one of these purchases could completely clear the SUB by itself which I figured would be helpful to be able to get this card now and have the SUB handled immediately, so it seemed like a reasonable time to apply. My scores were 756-770 about 60 days ago, but we bought a new car and opened a couple other accounts, so that obviously didn't help. I should have applied then, but I wasn't ready to pull the trigger at that point. Oh well.

Any recon advice I could get would be appreciated.

I think the bolded information is the culprit here.

Not only did you recently open multiple new credit lines (including a new auto loan), but your FICO scores also dropped by 60-72 points. I'll bet a dollar and a cent THAT is what has them jittery.

Here's the other thing:

These are unconventional economic times of great uncertainty. Many lenders are being very guarded (CLDs, closing dormant accounts, etc.). Relying on broad data points pre-March 2020 isn't likely to serve you well right now. Heck, I'm seeing high 700-low 800 FICO MFers get denied for cards at times. You might wait a spell of time, let the new accounts age, and then try again when your scores recover a bit.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 10:22:25 GMT

There is certainly no harm in attempting a recon, but keep your exepectations realistic. As for the process, see if they offer denial reasons and answer/provide assurances to their concerns and let the chips fall where they will.

Your current profile is a little ways off from being in strong approval status though. Utilization is increased, average age is low, new accounts are present, and scores are borderline for prime card approval.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

ntenseone — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 12:55:31 GMT

Thanks, guys, and yeah, I know my position isn't what it was as if late.

I do think I have at least a leg to stand on with Citi as I have 3 accounts in good standing, but one of my newest accounts is with them. I could see that maybe they want that account to mature some.

I'm maintaining a realistic stance, just figured I'd ask for a little jelp with recon if anyone has experience doing so with them.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

randomguy1 — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 17:56:12 GMT

Without a letter and not knowing the denial reason it could be a bit tough. I would mention you like the Prestige's card, benefits, and have upcoming travel that you could put spend towards.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

krmurrayjr10 — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 18:20:57 GMT

I agree with the other respondents that the multiple new accounts within the past 60 days are what led to the denial.

Do you have any other accounts with Citi? If you have an older account with Citi, that would help with a recon. If you already had another TY card with Citi that's been open for a year, you could upgrade it to the Prestige, but you would then of course forego the SUB.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

ntenseone — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 18:25:02 GMT

@krmurrayjr10 wrote:
I agree with the other respondents that the multiple new accounts within the past 60 days are what led to the denial.

Do you have any other accounts with Citi? If you have an older account with Citi, that would help with a recon. If you already had another TY card with Citi that's been open for a year, you could upgrade it to the Prestige, but you would then of course forego the SUB.

I have a Simplicity that's coming up on 1.5yrs old, a Diamond Preferred that's 2mo. old, and a Best Buy Visa that's about a year old.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

Red1Blue — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 20:34:05 GMT

Sorry to hear about your decline. May be recon will help.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

Iusedtolurk — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 00:14:32 GMT

@ntenseone wrote:
I have done a lot of reading/research and studying my feelings about whether or not to apply for my goal card and at the end I decided, "Why not. Let's see what happens."
Well, I was declined w/ the 7-10 day message.

I've seen some others get coached through recon and I was prepared for this to happen, so I want to make that recon call, but I have never had to do this with Citi before, so I wanted to check with you all and see what advice you may have.

My score ranges from 684-710
Util @ 22%
AAoA 1.6yrs
100% payment history
0 derogs
4/9 HP, depending on where I look
Income 130-ish
7/24

Some of the approval stories I've been reading were with WAY higher ?/24 or WAY lower income, etc., so I figured I'd just see where the chips landed. I've got some larger purchases coming this month and my util will look bad for a short time, not to mention one of these purchases could completely clear the SUB by itself which I figured would be helpful to be able to get this card now and have the SUB handled immediately, so it seemed like a reasonable time to apply. My scores were 756-770 about 60 days ago, but we bought a new car and opened a couple other accounts, so that obviously didn't help. I should have applied then, but I wasn't ready to pull the trigger at that point. Oh well.

Any recon advice I could get would be appreciated.

The worse that could happen is getting a NO and you already have that so go for it just be prepared to have the answers to alleviate any fears of risk they may have.

Who knows you may end up conversing with the CSR that will do you justice.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

krmurrayjr10 — Sat, 20 Jun 2020 01:33:52 GMT

Ok, then I would also suspect that the Diamond Preferred being just 2 months old might have also counted against you. They might have just wanted, especially given current conditions, to see how you handled it before giving you a 4th Citi card.

I actually had several new accounts, including with Citi, when I was approved for the Prestige last year, but I imagine they have tightened up since then.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

ntenseone — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 16:50:11 GMT

Okay, so I got my denial letter and it pretty much is what I thought it would be, so my question before I recon is this:

Has anyone had good luck in getting them to approve a new card by taking from your current SL on other accounts instead of extending "extra" credit?

Honestly if they'd do that I'd be more than happy reducing those limits to use for the Prestige. There is more than enough there to split them up (10k on Best Buy, 10,800 on Simplicity and 14,600 on Diamond).

Anyone had luck with that in the past from Citi?

Re: Citi Prestige denial

coldfusion — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 17:27:34 GMT

@ntenseone wrote:
Okay, so I got my denial letter and it pretty much is what I thought it would be, so my question before I recon is this:
Has anyone had good luck in getting them to approve a new card by taking from your current SL on other accounts instead of extending "extra" credit?
Honestly if they'd do that I'd be more than happy reducing those limits to use for the Prestige. There is more than enough there to split them up (10k on Best Buy, 10,800 on Simplicity and 14,600 on Diamond).

Anyone had luck with that in the past from Citi?

They don't normally shift around or combine limits any more but you've got nothing to lose by suggesting it during the call if it sounds like the recon isn't going to be successful.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

Deuter — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 23:48:24 GMT

@coldfusion wrote:
@ntenseone wrote:
Okay, so I got my denial letter and it pretty much is what I thought it would be, so my question before I recon is this:
Has anyone had good luck in getting them to approve a new card by taking from your current SL on other accounts instead of extending "extra" credit?
Honestly if they'd do that I'd be more than happy reducing those limits to use for the Prestige. There is more than enough there to split them up (10k on Best Buy, 10,800 on Simplicity and 14,600 on Diamond).

Anyone had luck with that in the past from Citi?
They don't normally shift around or combine limits any more but you've got nothing to lose by suggesting it during the call if it sounds like the recon isn't going to be successful.

I shifted/combined my limits this March.

Was easy, reached Citi executive response team. Took an HP. - Yes! you heard me HP for shifting my own limits.

Prestige went from 11K to 25K. Double Cash from 23-24K to 10K. I literally just shifted my CL to Prestige. I sockdrawered my Double Cash as i am abroad, so it was tempting just to leave it like 2K for a sockdrawered, but thought the more balanced way was to leave at 10.

I didn't have problems for citi extending me additional credit, just shifted out of conveniance more than necessity. I would suppose they would still extend me credit if i apply for as i'm 35K with them.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

ntenseone — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 00:07:14 GMT

@Deuter wrote:
@coldfusion wrote:
@ntenseone wrote:
Okay, so I got my denial letter and it pretty much is what I thought it would be, so my question before I recon is this:
Has anyone had good luck in getting them to approve a new card by taking from your current SL on other accounts instead of extending "extra" credit?
Honestly if they'd do that I'd be more than happy reducing those limits to use for the Prestige. There is more than enough there to split them up (10k on Best Buy, 10,800 on Simplicity and 14,600 on Diamond).

Anyone had luck with that in the past from Citi?
They don't normally shift around or combine limits any more but you've got nothing to lose by suggesting it during the call if it sounds like the recon isn't going to be successful.
I shifted/combined my limits this March.
Was easy, reached Citi executive response team. Took an HP. - Yes! you heard me HP for shifting my own limits.
Prestige went from 11K to 25K. Double Cash from 23-24K to 10K. I literally just shifted my CL to Prestige. I sockdrawered my Double Cash as i am abroad, so it was tempting just to leave it like 2K for a sockdrawered, but thought the more balanced way was to leave at 10.

I didn't have problems for citi extending me additional credit, just shifted out of conveniance more than necessity. I would suppose they would still extend me credit if i apply for as i'm 35K with them.

Thank you for letting me know your experience on this. Very helpful!

Re: Citi Prestige denial

Deuter — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 11:26:58 GMT

My Citi CLIs are due in September i will let you know how that goes. I have always softpull them for the past year and a half every 6 months. Usually they give 7-8K i believe, don't remember anymore. That's how i've grown my card. Though i have to say i have missed like 2 Clis or made some changes to my cards/accounts that make it reset my cli counter so it skipped. I'm still not sure what is my ceiling with Citi.

Re: Citi Prestige denial

ntenseone — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 21:27:18 GMT

@Deuter wrote:
My Citi CLIs are due in September i will let you know how that goes. I have always softpull them for the past year and a half every 6 months. Usually they give 7-8K i believe, don't remember anymore. That's how i've grown my card. Though i have to say i have missed like 2 Clis or made some changes to my cards/accounts that make it reset my cli counter so it skipped. I'm still not sure what is my ceiling with Citi.

My Simplicity CLI was soft, but my Best Buy Visa was a HP, but from what I understand BB works under their own set of rules. My Diamond Preferred is too new for a CLI, but between that, the Simplicity and the BB I'm only carrying 0%APR balances anyhow, so I'm not THE best customer in their eyes...yet.

UPDATE

I called for recon today and, at first, spoke with a gentleman named Gary who, if I'm being honest, sounded a bit like he was pretty green. I started by asking if he could tell me more about the letter I got because there were some redundancies on one part of the letter that offered reasons for denial, and before I could tell him about the other part of the letter that also included reasons for denial that were different he started to interrupt me to let me know to call the phone number on the letter. The only number to be found on the letter is for Experian, btw. I kept pushing forward saying that if we needed to borrow some of my SL from other accounts that I have in order to create this new account I'd be fine with that. He put me on hold for a couple of minutes and came back telling me that pulling from other lines of credit instead of extending me new credit was "impossible" and he'd have to pull my credit again and even then he didn't think the odds were favorable. I explained that they had just pulled my credit within the last 30 days, but he insisted, then kept interupting me and telling me that I'd need to call Experian about any kind of disputes with the decision I was given, etc. etc. I then asked if we could just product change another one of my accounts to the Prestige, citing that I have been getting solicitations for the past 6 months to do that anyhow, turning my Simplicity into a DC card. He again put me on hold and came back telling me that it is possible to do a product change, but that customer service would have to handle that, and that his dept just doesn't handle that sort of thing. I asked if I had called the recon dept. and he said, "Yep, you're in the right place." It certainly didn't sound like it, so I had him transfer me to customer service, where I was told that yes, the DC offer stands, but that they were unable to PC me into a Prestige.

I did a little more research and found this thread at flyertalk https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/citi-thankyou-rewards/1660853-citi-credit-card-reconsideration-reports-consolidated-7.html which is a pretty good read, but I found that people were having a lot of the same issues I was having with Gary, but I read that someone mentioned calling and asking for a manual review.
Now, I need to stop here for a sec because I thought that was the whole point behind calling recon in the first place, but I guess with Citi that isn't so much the case.

After reading about the manual review, I decided to call again, hoping I wouldn't get Gary a second time....luckily, this time I got a delightful young lady by the name of Kimberly. I simply told her this. "Hi, Kimberly, I was calling today because I received my denial letter and, while I don't know how these are generated, I was hoping to submit for a manual review." She said, "Sure, let me do that right now." and put me on hold on and off for the next few minutes, and finally came back with "Congratulations! I was able to approve you for a Citi Prestige card for $11,700." Honestly, I was expecting a "No" after all this run around, but Kimberly came through for me and I thanked her as much as I could without sounding like too much of a kid in a candy store.

Honestly, though, I was sincerely appreciative of her ability to take me on without her making me feel like she was just trying to pass me off to someone else.

Cliff notes:

Citi denial?

Ask for a "Manual Review" when you call recon (1-800-695-5171)

I was an Experian pull at 704

Re: Citi Prestige denial

Deuter — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 13:36:46 GMT

That sounds like a great story!!! so happy for you!!! So magic words are "manual review" , and a bit of luck in the customer service agent

Re: Citi Prestige denial

AllZero — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 13:48:30 GMT

Congratulations on your successful manual review and approval!

Re: Citi Prestige denial

gdale6 — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 15:20:55 GMT

As OP has now been approved thread is closed to further comment. OP is free to create an approval thread if so desired.