Capital One CLI recon vs maybe a different card?

[Austrausky]

I find myself in a bit of a struggle, currently, and looking for some advice.  Sorry this is a bit long-winded, but hopefully the background helps.

First, here's what I've got:

CapOne Secured Mastercard CL $2000

CapOne Visa Platinum CL $600

Merrick Bank Visa CL $1250

CapOne Quicksilver Mastercard CL $1500 (I am AU only, in my wife's name)

My scores: EQ 607 / TU 608 / EX 632

My wife's scores: EQ 581 / TU 595 / EX 597

Both are rebuilding, started about six months ago

Now my dilemma:

I've recently taken an outside sales job and have a pretty high monthly churn on my credit cards as a result ($5k - $6k avg).  Company reimburses for all expenses, but due to my relatively low credit limits I'm constantly moving between multiple cards and PIF every 3 weeks or so.  On the secured card I added deposits to get that CL up to $2k but I got the same letter that a lot of other folks have where they are no longer accepting deposits for increased CL (as of 19-Jan-2016).  I contacted CapOne when a new option showed up under "Services" to do an account combination, and they indicated that I could combine my accounts into one as long as I paid the balance on one of them so I tried that and then was told that I actually could not because one of the accounts was secured.  Merrick gave me an unsolicited $200 CLI recently (was $1050 CL previous), probably due to recent behavior, and collectively we put in for a CLI on all three CapOne cards.  The secured card was denied stating that secured cards are simply not eligible for unsecured CLI.  The Quicksilver card was approved for $1000 CLI (was $500 CL previous).  The Visa platinum CLI was declined indicating my FICO was too low (even though my scores are higher than my wife's??), however they did convert the card to Quicksilver rewards (still in process).

Here are my considerations:

1> Go for Visa CLI recon and hope to get that approved and high enough to limit usage to 2 cards per month

2> Go for a new unsecured card and hope that I can get a high enough CL

3> Go for a new secured card and simply deposit enough cash to get me to a high enough CL, which is the route I was going until CapOne cut me off

4> Suck it up for another six months and see if anything changes

Ideally, I would like to come out of this with one card that has a high enough CL and rewards (travel or cashback) but I'm realistic so I'm looking for some others to chime in on best way to proceed.

Thanks all 

[Anonymous]

don't take this rude but you seem to be in a situation where your spend simply exceeds your credit worthiness (of course i am assuming you PIF monthly due to your company paying you back and you covering your personal expenses)

if you have the liquid cash i would consider maybe a $3k-$6k secured discover it card? still get rewards and get a high enough limit to help you use just one or two cards. it's a thought..

i don't think you'll get an approval for any non-store card for the "usable" limit you need at this point. after the six months then maybe check the prequal for cap1

[Austrausky]

Not rude at all, I happen to agree.

I have indeed looked at the Discover secured card, and the only drawback is the max deposit is $2500.  Bank of America offers up to $4900.  I'm still looking at which might be better in the long run, because CL is not the be-all-end-all.

Thanks for the input.

[Anonymous]

on i didn't know the max. i guess one good thing about the discover (if offered for secured card) is you can get the double cash back promo which effectively makes it a solid 2% card and 4% on restaurants. not too bad

[Anonymous]

after looking, it does qualify for the double cash promo

[Chezy1025]

I think both the Discover and BOA secured cards are great options, both have potential to unsecure at 12months. I guess you would just have to consider the rewards with each and note that the BOA does have an annual fee - on a side note I was pre-qualified for the BOA secured and the limit I was provided was 300-10,000 for the card. So there is potential to have a pretty high secured limit