Citi Double Cash Credit Limit INCREASE

[Anonymous]

My fico scores are 765/766/766 and I have one other card which is an Amex that had a $10k limit and shows a $2k balance even though we pay it off every month.
I applied for the Citi double cash rewards card and was approved for only $2k and though it was a bit weird/low.

I made one charge on the card for $2k and then immediately paid it off in full to show some activity and then requested a credit increase to $15k and was informed that my request would be sent to the credit department.  Then I logged in the next day and have a $15k limit.  I checked my score monitoring service and it didn't flag any hard pulls, but I just requested yesterday so I'm not 100% sure.

I think this will make a good combination with my Amex Blue Cash Preferred.  which gives me 6% on groceries and 3% on gas.  Then Citi double rewards for everything else for the 2%.  #win

[Anonymous]

@ tuwood: Congratulations, that's a very nice cli.  The DC is notorious for giving low sl.  I am having no success with getting a cli so far.  To see this gives me a little hope. By the way, welcome to the forums, there's a wealth of knowledge around these parts.

[righthererightnow]

congrats! !!!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

@ tuwood: Congratulations, that's a very nice cli.  The DC is notorious for giving low sl.  I am having no success with getting a cli so far.  To see this gives me a little hope. By the way, welcome to the forums, there's a wealth of knowledge around these parts.

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Thanks for the warm welcome.

To add a little more detail, I checked my report and the initial Citi card request did a hard pull on Experian on 7/14/16 and when I did the limit increase request they did another hard pull of Experian on 8/6/16.

Another fun fact is that my Amex gave me a $1500 CLI without even asking.  They must collude or watch my credit report and saw I got a different card.  haha

To add a little more background for those working towards these cards I lost my job in 2009 and had very bad credit up until 2011 with my last late pay on Aug 2011.  I had a few of the low credit limit Capital One cards for several years but my score always hovered in the mid to upper 600's.
I was speculating that having "bad credit" type cards on my account wasn't helping my case to get better ones so I closed all of them and went to zero credit cards for almost a year.  I had our mortgage ($310k) and two car payments (~$1000 combined) and the inquiries and old slow pays continued to fall off last year and earlier this year.
From that I got my score into the low 700's and requested the Amex Cash preferred card and they gave it to me with a $10k limit.  I shifted 100% of our spending that I could to that card and paid it off several times a month.  Once that card registered my score shot up to the 770 range and then I got the Citi card.
My wife and I are using the Amex for Groceries (6%) and Gas (3%) and everything else goes on the Citi card (2%).

I've noticed my score is very sensitive to the balances so if I let it wait until even the due date on the card they will report the new balance and it impacts my score so I'm paying them off almost every week.

Good luck everyone, but keep up the fight because there is a path back to great credit once we get in a hole. 

[sarge12]

Well...it took a hp but I also had my requested cli from 4000 to 10000 approved. Hate it took a hp though...now it's time to garden.

[Anonymous]

Congrats on the cli Sarge. I get no love from Citi, other than weekly bt offers and checks. With a $2.8k, what can I transfer, lol. I tried a hp, no go.

[Anonymous]

I think theyve been generous lately... i had my 2600 raised to 10,000 on Monday and have read about a few others this week. If youve had your card a few months and are one of those that started with a low limitvin relation to your other cards, may be worth requesting a higher limit right now. Ymmv

[AzaleaB]

Congrats!

[Vegas4Play]

Congrats to you  !!!!

[Anonymous]

Strangely Citi has been very stingy with my (wife's) card since we got it 15 months ago. Starting with a $1700 CL and always getting denied increases when applied for online. We were auto-increased to $2550 after 12 months but still until this day get denied for increases with about a 750 credit score. Amex has been generous going from 6500 to 30000 in 16 months. I wonder why Citi doesn't share their confidence in us.