Hello everyone! This site has helped me out in so many ways...just a quick message to give back to someone that may need help. Background: Joint card at NFCU opened July 2014 CL 5000.00. Capitalone secured card opened in Jan 2014, 200 dollar deposit. After 7 months, auto CLI to 500. Buckle, VS, Express using shopping card trick in Jan 2014. All credit limits were 350.00. Hit the Luv button in Sept, all increased to 550.00. Wells Fargo secured Jan 2014, CL 300. EQ 549 EX 606 TU 636 Karma 630.
So anyways, I check all the sites for a pre approved offers almost daily (Citi, bank of America, chase, amex, us bank, discover, capitalone, creditcards.com). I never get crap. In Sept Capitalone gave me an auto increase from 200 to 500 CL. Cool! So 2 weeks ago I checked their site and it says "Congratulations, you’re pre approved for either a Quick silver card, or platinum card". I checked creditcards.com and it had the same offer. Wasn’t ready to pull the trigger.
I read on the forums that you can contact capitalone and possibly get an increase. So I started with capitalone and contacted them on their website using the “over limit” tab. I got a response stating” we cannot increase secured cards upon requests from the customer” . So I contacted them through Facebook. They instantly responded and were all for increasing my limit, that’s until they found out that I had a secured card. So no go there.
I then contacted Cap1 by phone. It sucked because I got their call center. Again no one could help. Their advice was to apply for a new card. Easy said, but I don’t want a hard pull. I’m trying to avoid inquiries. Last person I spoke to was a supervisor at Cap1. She stated Cap1 may periodically increase my account if it’s in good standing. But she said it’ll never graduate to an unsecured card and I can never request an increase. She said the checks were random. If it happens it does, if not…then it won’t. She said basically put my secured card in a drawer and forget about it. I told her about my pre approved offer and asked what are my chances of getting the card. She said 90 percent. I didn’t want to go this route and was hoping they could soft pull me or upgrade me, but she said they can’t do that. So I applied. Oh and by the way…on the bottom of the pre approved screen it had the OPT OUT message.
Denied!!!!!
What really?? You can’t even approve me for 300 bucks? You give me a pre approved offer, you already gave me 300 dollars unsecured in the form of a credit increase on my secured card. So why can’t you approve me for 300 bucks??
Anyways, I contacted the EO by email. I explained to them my situation which makes no sense to me. It doesn’t make sense to pre approve me, waste a hard pull, and deny me for 300 bucks….especially when you already gave me 300 bucks on my secured card. I told them to cancel my secured card, refund my 200 deposit and turn the remainder 300 into an unsecured card.
They contacted me in 2 days. We discussed my frustration which they understood and were cool about it. They said they would manually look over my application. A week and a half later, got a call and they said they approved the Quicksilver card for 500 bucks.
So the EO method works. Email them!!! Talking to call centers not located in our country is super frustrating and gets you nowhere. Call centers are a complete waste of time!
Discover IT $17k / US Bank Ace (VSig) $13.5K / US Bank Cash+ (VSig) $13.5k
Gardening Until Further Notice