I was discharged in Chapter 7 bankruptcy in December 2016. In 2017 I started applying for crappy credit cards with $300-$500 limits (Credit One and similar) and was approved for a bunch of them. By the end of 2018 I had also secured a couple of Capital One cards and an Ollo card, all with around $1K limits. I was pleasantly shocked when in March 2019, Discover approved me for a card with a $5K limit! Soon after that I also got a Barclays Card through Apple with a $3.5K limit. IIRC my FICO 8 score was around 660 at the time.
Unfortunately I had more or less maxed out all these cards so the few times I requested a CLI from Discover, they basically turned me down for high credit utilization, too many cards with balances, only minimum payments being made, etc. In fact, Discover even cut my CL by $500. BTW, since coming out of bankruptcy, I've had a pristine payment record. Recently I paid down 90% of my balances (I'm at <10% utilization now) and my score is at 700. I've been helped by being an authorized user on two hardly-ever-used (and fully paid every month) Amex accounts, each with a $25K limit.
So now I confidently re-requested a CLI increase from Discover and was turned down again. The reasons? "Too many bankcard accounts" (even though they all have zero balances except Discover and Barclays which have a $2K balance each against total credit availabilty of $60K), "Average age of bank revolving trades too short" (it's a little under 4 years which is higher than when I was initially approved for $5K), and "No mortgage/insufficient decrease in mortage balance" (Huh? I do have a car loan with a perfect 3-year payment record).
Any suggestions? I can cancel all the crappy cards which will reduce my available credit by <$10K while increasing my average account age by a year. Will that hurt me in any way and are there any other ideas? Does Discover do reconsideration?
All help welcome. Thanks in advance.
@FinStar wrote:Hello @NYC_Fella and welcome to the forums.
Unfortunately, Discover does not reconsider CLI system-declined decisions. Is the current limit still $500? How long ago did you get added to the AmEx CCs? - keep in mind AmEx does not backdate the reporting history (even as AU), so these would report as of the moment you were added on those accounts.
Thanks for the welcome and the response. Actually the initial limit that Discover gave me nearly 2 years ago was $5000, even though I had a much weaker credit history and score than I do now. That was a big and pleasant surprise. Somewhere along the way they reduced the CL to $4500 where it still stands.
The Amex cards were added a bit over a year ago, but I think the favorable effect of the very high limits on my utilization outweighs the unfavorable effect of the short age of the accounts.
