So I have had a regular Chase Freedom card for a long time. Like it is my oldest credit card on my report. I have some stories about that experience but I will save those for another time. I also have a Chase Checking Account.
The purpose of this post is to talk about the Chase 5/24 rule. Sorry this might be kinda long but let me explain.
I have used creditkarma for a while also. Earlier this year, CK started telling me I was prequalified for several cards. They told me for months that I was pre-approved for Chase cards and Amex cards. Well the Amex and Chase pre-qualification tools kept saying no pre-qual offers. Wanting to be cautious I thought I would have a better shot with Chase as Amex is known for being more conservative with lending.
I went ahead and applied for the Chase Freedom Unlimited card. I am pretty sure I only had my experian report unlocked because it looked like Chase mostly pulls experian. I was immediately denied and immediately called the recon line. The representative sounded sympathetic but said she could not approve my account because of too much new credit and she was not allowed to override that factor. She would not confirm an exact 5/24 rule only that there was too much new credit on my file.
That cost me an HP on my Experian for nothing which kind of sucked.
Fast forward 6 or 7 months and I have unfrozen all my reports for a few months. All of a sudden I start getting all sorts of prequal offers for credit on my Chase online account.
I was prequal for Sapphire, the Southwest Arilines Card, and the Freedom Unlimited. All of the offers showed credit limits around 18k and all showed specific APR's that were the lowest offered and not a range of APR's. After reading threads here I felt pretty confident that this was a firm prequal offer because it was on my Chase account and the APR's were firm not a range of APR's.
I still waited a month or so to accept the offer and Chase sent emails to remind me of the offers.
Last night I finally applied. I thought of relocking my TU and EQ files since they just pulled Experian the last time, although I think my other files were locked last time.
But to my surprise, Chase pulled two HP's on both Experian and TU at the same time. I had never heard of anyone but Capital One pulling multiple bureaus, so be careful when applying in the future. You might want to lock one or the other, although I am not sure if that will prevent Chase from offering credit. I am not thrilled they pulled both.
Then I got the dreaded we will let you know message. I usually try to wait all day to see if I hear something or to give the lender a chance to do any reviews, but I heard nothing from Chase. I ended up calling the recon line later in the day. The representative was nice and said it looked like just a verification issue. He transferred me to a third party verification line and within a minute, I was approved.
I am happy I was approved, but the final CL ended up only being 10.9k. I am grateful I was approved, but I don't understand why there was such a big difference between the prequal amount and my new CL. There is no derogatory information on any of my reports. I called the recon line back and they said once an account is approved they can no longer recon the CL without a formal request and another HP. I told them nevermind and will just stay with my current CL. I do still have the lowest APR.
I do not know my TU Fico, but my Experian Fico was about a 726. My Credit Utilization across all bureaus is 28%. I will try to find out my TU Fico if Chase sends it with the card and will post it here. BTW, I did have about 5 MC and Visa apps in the last 2 years, so if you are prequal on the Chase site, it appears you are good to go over by one.
I mainly wanted to post here to let you all know that and to know that Chase pulled both EX and TU so I got the Freedom Unlimited but it took 2 HP this time.
Edit, someone said I can get my TU FICO from Discover so I did. My TU FICO is also 726. Both my Fico's (myfico lol) were 726, although I am not sure if Chase uses the same model as Discover and EX do on their monitoring. Thank you and good night.
