topic Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story) in Credit Cards

Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:16:17 GMT

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to the forums. I thought I would share some of my success.

To make a long story short, I finally achieved primeville back in Sep 2011. I was approved for Amex Premier Rewards and Green cards. Since then, I've been working on my scores and have finally gotten all 3 FICO scores to be in the 750 - 788 range and Util at 6%. (To keep it in perspective, my EX FICO was around a 630 and Util around 85% when approved for Amex PR/Green.)

Mar 2011 - Chase United Mileage Explorer (10K Visa Sig limit, 60k miles bonus)

Mar 2011 - Chase Sapphire Preferred (5K Visa Sig limit, 60k UR points bonus)

Mar 2011 - Discover Escape (4K limit, 25k miles bonus)

Today - Amex Hilton Surpass (20K limit, 60k points bonus)

Today - Amex BCP (20K limit)

(Note: I did have an Amex Green back in '98. So, I now have four Amex cards backdating to '98.)

Yes, I am absolutely shocked and amazed at my two Amex approvals today!!! Cannot believe it. All the hard work has truly paid off. I had a lot of disputes with the CRB, but my reports are finally completely clean! (I had BK in 2002 and various lates/collections in 2005-2006.)

My question - I know that high some Visa Signature limits will not report. Fortunately, Chase does report its Visa Sig limits. What about Amex? Do 20K limits report?

Thank you ALL for your advice on these forums. People like MarineVietVet, haulingthescoreup, LS2982, Credit Scholar, CS800, TannerK have been very, very informative!

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

aussiesareforever — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:07:21 GMT

Congrats on your story and for encouraging someone like me with a fairly recent BK. It is nice to know what is possible in the future!

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

Brian_Trying_700 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:13:12 GMT

Nice Job and congrats. That is a lot of encouragement for myself and many other people here.

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

TNTransplant — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:20:09 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Hi all,

I'm fairly new to the forums. I thought I would share some of my success.

(Note: I did have an Amex Green back in '98. So, I now have four Amex cards backdating to '98.)

Yes, I am absolutely shocked and amazed at my two Amex approvals today!!! Cannot believe it. All the hard work has truly paid off. I had a lot of disputes with the CRB, but my reports are finally completely clean! (I had BK in 2002 and various lates/collections in 2005-2006.)

This. One can't underestimate the power of AMEX backdating four cards back to 1998... Not at all minimizing your hard work at cleaning up your credit and recovering after bankruptcy, but this one thing has had a huge impact.

Congrats on your scores/cards and overall credit improvement.

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:56:04 GMT

@TNTransplant wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Hi all,

I'm fairly new to the forums. I thought I would share some of my success.

(Note: I did have an Amex Green back in '98. So, I now have four Amex cards backdating to '98.)

Yes, I am absolutely shocked and amazed at my two Amex approvals today!!! Cannot believe it. All the hard work has truly paid off. I had a lot of disputes with the CRB, but my reports are finally completely clean! (I had BK in 2002 and various lates/collections in 2005-2006.)

This. One can't underestimate the power of AMEX backdating four cards back to 1998... Not at all minimizing your hard work at cleaning up your credit and recovering after bankruptcy, but this one thing has had a huge impact.

Congrats on your scores/cards and overall credit improvement.

Thanks TNT!

I agree that the backdating is crucial. Keep in mind that my FICO's are currently only being helped by the two backdated Gold/Green cards. I only got approved for the other two today. But, in all honesty, this is part of the reason I applied for these cards. My AAOA has been hit by the 3 recent Chase/Discover approvals. The additional 28 years from the new cards certainly will not hurt!

To be clear, though, I really wanted the Hilton Surpass card! I stay with Hilton all the time and the rewards program for this card is great. 9 points for any Hilton spend, 6 points for supermarket/gas/drug store purchases, 3 points for everything else.

For those who are looking for a credit tip, I will share that my biggest FICO gains came from reducing my overall UTIL %. I gained probably between 80-100 points when I went from 85% to 6%. I accomplished this by not only paying off my cards, but also by seeking as many soft pull CLI's as I could. Not only did my overall UTIL drop, but the UTIL on the individual cards made a huge impact. Prior to reading these forums, I had no idea that maxing out a $750 or $1000 limit card would ruin my scores! This overall strategy of improving UTIL% worked wonders!

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

Brian_Trying_700 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:26:21 GMT

Amen. Im here to listen and learn. Its such a great forum.

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

pizzadude — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:32:55 GMT

The credit limits for your AMEX cards will show on your reports, I believe that after individual CLs get above 50 or 60K they are no longer counted in FICO utilization.

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 04:40:29 GMT

@pizzadude wrote:

The credit limits for your AMEX cards will show on your reports, I believe that after individual CLs get above 50 or 60K they are no longer counted in FICO utilization.

Thanks, pizzadude. That's helpful and good news!

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 05:31:44 GMT

@pizzadude wrote:

The credit limits for your AMEX cards will show on your reports, I believe that after individual CLs get above 50 or 60K they are no longer counted in FICO utilization.

Really? So does that mean going from a $40k CL to $70k CL will hurt your score (all other things being equal)?

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

aussiesareforever — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 05:35:40 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@pizzadude wrote:

The credit limits for your AMEX cards will show on your reports, I believe that after individual CLs get above 50 or 60K they are no longer counted in FICO utilization.
Really? So does that mean going from a $40k CL to $70k CL will hurt your score (all other things being equal)?

I believe it means it wouldn't increase your score. The additional credit limit will NOT count towards your utilization so your score wouldn't go up like it might have otherwise. It might hurt your score from an AAoA perspective but not in the OP's case since his new accounts were back dated. Hope that makes sense.

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

TNTransplant — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:07:32 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks TNT!

For those who are looking for a credit tip, I will share that my biggest FICO gains came from reducing my overall UTIL %. I gained probably between 80-100 points when I went from 85% to 6%. I accomplished this by not only paying off my cards, but also by seeking as many soft pull CLI's as I could. Not only did my overall UTIL drop, but the UTIL on the individual cards made a huge impact. Prior to reading these forums, I had no idea that maxing out a $750 or $1000 limit card would ruin my scores! This overall strategy of improving UTIL% worked wonders!

This is exactly what I'm trying to do also, as there's nothing else for me to do but pay down utilization and wait for inquiries to drop off. When I found this forum at the first of the year (and figured out what my problem was by reading the threads), my utilization was around 80%. It's now around 50% (secondary to paying down balances and getting soft CLIs). Subsequently, my scores have increased by 30-40 points over the past 4 months, so I know this strategy works. I'm not sure of how accurate the FICO simulator is, but if I can get my utilization down to 1-9% it says I could have a 750 score - would love to see that! And, that would correlate with the 80-100 point increase you experienced.

I'm hoping to accomplish this by the end of the year. Thanks again for sharing your story - it gives me hope...

Re: Amex Approvals! (and some of my story)

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:54:22 GMT

@TNTransplant wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks TNT!

For those who are looking for a credit tip, I will share that my biggest FICO gains came from reducing my overall UTIL %. I gained probably between 80-100 points when I went from 85% to 6%. I accomplished this by not only paying off my cards, but also by seeking as many soft pull CLI's as I could. Not only did my overall UTIL drop, but the UTIL on the individual cards made a huge impact. Prior to reading these forums, I had no idea that maxing out a $750 or $1000 limit card would ruin my scores! This overall strategy of improving UTIL% worked wonders!
This is exactly what I'm trying to do also, as there's nothing else for me to do but pay down utilization and wait for inquiries to drop off. When I found this forum at the first of the year (and figured out what my problem was by reading the threads), my utilization was around 80%. It's now around 50% (secondary to paying down balances and getting soft CLIs). Subsequently, my scores have increased by 30-40 points over the past 4 months, so I know this strategy works. I'm not sure of how accurate the FICO simulator is, but if I can get my utilization down to 1-9% it says I could have a 750 score - would love to see that! And, that would correlate with the 80-100 point increase you experienced.

I'm hoping to accomplish this by the end of the year. Thanks again for sharing your story - it gives me hope...

No problem. I'm really glad to help.

I think that this forum has been so hopeful to me. It's my turn to provide a helpful tip whenever I can!

I hate to sound clichéd, but I sometimes felt that it would be impossible to ever see the (credit) day of light again! But, with lots of patience/persistance and plenty of advice from this forum, I've been able to completely turn it around.

So thank you all.