topic Re: Synchrony Roulette in Credit Cards

Synchrony Roulette

CreditKick — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 00:37:58 GMT

Thinking about asking for a cli for my scorerewards mastercard (**bleep**'s Sporting Goods, where I work) Currently at 3k, and pretty sure they'll move it to 8 if I ask. However, I have 6 sync cards for 67k, and I know they can be ..... flighty...... anywaaay.... I wondered if anyone might want to share synchrony stats, how far we can get without issues. I'll start, as I said, 6 cards, 67k

Re: Synchrony Roulette

SpaceCityCCuser — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 04:22:13 GMT

The risk reward is not worth it. To much limit with one bank. Synchrony is by far the worst when you get on their high risk radar.

Re: Synchrony Roulette

pauldc73 — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 04:38:41 GMT

@CreditKick wrote:
Thinking about asking for a cli for my scorerewards mastercard (**bleep**'s Sporting Goods, where I work) Currently at 3k, and pretty sure they'll move it to 8 if I ask. However, I have 6 sync cards for 67k, and I know they can be ..... flighty...... anywaaay.... I wondered if anyone might want to share synchrony stats, how far we can get without issues. I'll start, as I said, 6 cards, 67k

I don't have anything useful to add here, but I think is funny you can't type d i c k's sporting goods on the forum without it getting censored! Swearing about the place they work at

Re: Synchrony Roulette

xenon3030 — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 04:51:54 GMT

The question is how on earth you can use any of these 6 Synchrony credit cards without any credit card closure or CLD? Sometimes they close the credit cards upon using them

While it might be worth to consider the CL of 67k to minimize the total utilization ratio across all the cards, if Synchrony decides to close them all, it can trigger the other lenders to do AAs and it can hurt badly. The risk is not worth.

Re: Synchrony Roulette

KatzNDawgs — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 17:25:32 GMT

Poor Richard, can't even use his nickname on a public forum!

But to the question - 6 cards with sync is a lot, and that total CL exposure is pretty risky. I would make sure that you have much higher CL allocated to other cards, as a backup. Plus I agree with @xenon3030 that Sync getting spooked and doing CLD/closures can cause a negative domino effect with other lenders. I personally would not go with 6 Sync cards, I'm a bit wary just having 2 at the moment as I have in the past (holding just 1 Sync card at the time) had an account closure after not using for a couple months.

Re: Synchrony Roulette

UncleB — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 03:02:41 GMT

@CreditKick wrote:
Thinking about asking for a cli for my scorerewards mastercard (**bleep**'s Sporting Goods, where I work) Currently at 3k, and pretty sure they'll move it to 8 if I ask. However, I have 6 sync cards for 67k, and I know they can be ..... flighty...... anywaaay.... I wondered if anyone might want to share synchrony stats, how far we can get without issues. I'll start, as I said, 6 cards, 67k

I have five accounts with Synchrony, two of which are my oldest two accounts:

Lowe's - $20k

Belk - $5k

Sam's Club MC - $20k

Care Credit MC - $15k

Venmo Visa - $13k

When I opened the Venmo card I had a similar concern about a shutdown, but at the time I "needed" a good card for Walmart so I figured it was worth the gamble (so far so good). I'll add that other than the Venmo my cards are fairly seasoned... Lowe's was opened in 2004, Belk in 2006, Sam's Club MC in 2015, Care Credit MC in 2018, and finally Venmo in 2022.

Now that I have better options for WM there's very little reason to keep the Venmo card around (and I'd much rather have the Paypal MC) but I feel like that might be pushing things a bit so I'm sitting on my hands, LOL. At some point I might change my mind, but at this time most of the purchases I'd steer to a Paypal MC I can get the same 3% with either BoA CCR or Amex BCE so there's no urgency.

If it was me and I had an actual need for a Dicк's card with a higher limit I would consider going for it, but if it's just for vanity or padding I'd probably let sleeping dogs lie (this is why my Belk card has a $5k limit).

Just my 2¢.

Re: Synchrony Roulette

Realist — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 05:20:50 GMT

Synchrony is the sketchest card I've ever held. I was fine to process whatever line for that moment in time, Lowes, but not use it much after. They're pretty quick to close out accounts.

When you compare them to others, it's not often to the advantage to customer to keep and utilize their line. Yes, there are always conditions and exceptions - but it's also easy to not the patterns of consumers and their complaints about the card line.

Re: Synchrony Roulette

woodyman100 — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 00:24:19 GMT

@pauldc73 wrote:
@CreditKick wrote:
Thinking about asking for a cli for my scorerewards mastercard (**bleep**'s Sporting Goods, where I work) Currently at 3k, and pretty sure they'll move it to 8 if I ask. However, I have 6 sync cards for 67k, and I know they can be ..... flighty...... anywaaay.... I wondered if anyone might want to share synchrony stats, how far we can get without issues. I'll start, as I said, 6 cards, 67k
I don't have anything useful to add here, but I think is funny you can't type d i c k's sporting goods on the forum without it getting censored! Swearing about the place they work at

wonder if I'm the reason why 😂 https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Dicks-no-more/m-p/4268951

Re: Synchrony Roulette

UncleB — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 07:42:49 GMT

@woodyman100 wrote:
@pauldc73 wrote:
@CreditKick wrote:
Thinking about asking for a cli for my scorerewards mastercard (**bleep**'s Sporting Goods, where I work) Currently at 3k, and pretty sure they'll move it to 8 if I ask. However, I have 6 sync cards for 67k, and I know they can be ..... flighty...... anywaaay.... I wondered if anyone might want to share synchrony stats, how far we can get without issues. I'll start, as I said, 6 cards, 67k
I don't have anything useful to add here, but I think is funny you can't type d i c k's sporting goods on the forum without it getting censored! Swearing about the place they work at
wonder if I'm the reason why 😂 https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Dicks-no-more/m-p/4268951

Nah, it wasn't you.

It was added to the smut filter (yep, that's what it's called) by the admin a few years ago due to the word repeatedly being used in a context that had nothing to do with the sporting goods store (I'm talking beyond harmless innuendo).

It's a shame since the word definitely has a forum-friendly use, but it only takes a few to mess things up for everybody.

Re: Synchrony Roulette

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 15:23:36 GMT

@UncleB wrote:

It's a shame since the word definitely has a forum-friendly use, but it only takes a few to mess things up for everybody.

Ah, a new challenge!

Re: Synchrony Roulette

UncleB — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 06:06:16 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@UncleB wrote:

It's a shame since the word definitely has a forum-friendly use, but it only takes a few to mess things up for everybody.
Ah, a new challenge!

Re: Synchrony Roulette

youngandcreditwrthy — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 12:39:07 GMT

you can get to 100k in syncb cards total before they get scared and start aa'ing. that's about it.

I'm about where youare for the second time in my life. I ask for clis monthly lol. on every card. they are not as generous or as slow as they used to be.

your limits fluctuate with your income and scores.

Re: Synchrony Roulette

UncleB — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 17:10:32 GMT

@youngandcreditwrthy wrote:
you can get to 100k in syncb cards total before they get scared and start aa'ing. that's about it.

I'm about where youare for the second time in my life. I ask for clis monthly lol. on every card. they are not as generous or as slow as they used to be.

your limits fluctuate with your income and scores.

Just to clarify, you don't necessarily have to get to $100k to get Synchrony's attention... plenty of folks have experienced AA (complete shutdowns) well below $100k. I could provide links, but the threads are easy enough to find (sadly there are plenty of them).

I'll also add that $100k is a credit line cap for combined exposure across Synch accounts (there are a couple of outliers I've seen report going slightly over $100k, but they are definitely edge cases). In the past folks would lower a Synchrony credit line to make themselves eligible for addition credit on a different Synchrony account if they were close to $100k, but these days many folks will steer clear of getting anywhere close to $100k to be on the safe side.

Synchrony AA can be weird. While the triggers are often the usual suspects (high utilization, carrying high balances across multiple Synchrony accounts, etc.) sometimes they can be things that other issuers aren't generally concerned with. A few years ago there was a mass shutdown, and one of the 'common threads' for myFICO members were folks who had recently added an AU. That was a first, and we've not seen it happen since (at least not in numbers big enough to be noticable).