Theres a TL;DR at the bottom, but I've included the entire narrative for anyone who enjoys remarkably forgetable stories.
Five years ago when I was neglecting the maxed out cards in my wallet, I received the letter countless others have. Capital One was offering me their Platinum Card. $300 CL with a chance of increasing to $500 after 6 months of ontime payments. At that point I only had a Chase Freedom Unlimited with a 3,300 CL, and a $300 Visa from my Credit Union that I opened thinking it would help establish credit. I made monthly payments, but both typically stayed maxed out. So when I was offered a card from someone other than CreditOne and Indigo I told myself "this will be a good opportunity to expand my portfolo. The answer to maxed out cards is surely to take on another." Looking back my true surprise is that they didn't make me go with the secured version.
Once the card came in I was back to old form in no time. Maxed the card out by the end of the week. But nevertheless I was committed to getting the CLI after the six months, so I made the payments and did eventually become the proud owner of a $500 CapitalOne platinum card with an available balance of two hundr.... oh wait its maxed out again. Oh well goal accomplished.
Fast-forward to three years ago, I had finally cracked down on finance and was starting to really take some dents out of the credit card debt I'd compiled. For some reason I can't really explain I decided to upgrade the card to CapitalOne's QS. Honestly I think I was just excited to get into rewards cards. I had been doing my homework and had some momentum towards paying off debt, so I wanted a card that allowed me to start putting together some semblance of a rewards strategy. I figured It would give me a better card without a hard pull. Which is exactly what it did. This didn't hurt me, but it wasn't exactly beneficial either.
Since that initial CLI to $500 I have had ONE other request approved. In five years my $500 CL had climbed to... $600. I eventually stopped caring about the card, and accepted I was stuck in CapOnes infamous bucket system - for that card at least. It pretty much became a sock drawer card at that point. Then three months ago I decided I was tired of having to remember to use it every few months for a minor purchase. I attached it to a monthly insurance bill for auto pay. That way it saw use and I could completely neglect it in peace.
This brings us to now when I logged on to pay the cards balance from this months insurance premium. To my surprise there was a new number following the words "Credit Limit": $2,600. Now, I know it's not a huge CL, and in fact it's my smallest CL (except for the old $300 Credit Union card) despite the increase. But this made me happier than seeing my AMEX 3x. That happens every 6 months like clock work. I thought this was never going to be a possiblity. Ive heard horror stories about people getting stuck in the bucket system, and never getting more than 10% CLIs. So to get a 4.33x CLI makes me think there may be hope for the card yet.
TL;DR - Capital One Quicksilver received a non-requested CLI. $600 to $2600. May be escaping bucketland.
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