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I've had a lot of CL ups and downs in my 16 year relationship with Amex. They were my first prime card when my CH13 fell off in '02, starting me off with a generous $8.5k. They quickly auto-bumped me up to $21.5K over the next 18 months. However, financial woes returned and led me to max out all my cc's in the mid 2000's. During the financial meltdown of '08, they balance chased me all the way down to $5.8k. I was never late and always paid over the minimum, but utilization was constantly high... over 90% on all cards.
In '09-10, my financial health took a major turn for the better. I finally paid off the massive $65k debt in and vowed to never carry a balance of more than a few bucks ever again. Despite maxing my scores while keeping utilization under 1% over the ensuing years, Amex never auto raised my CL again. (I should point out, none of my other cards -BoFA, Discover, Chase, Cap1- auto raised my CL's during this time either).
While always knowing I could easily get CL increase by request, the hard pull deterred me. Thanks to this forum, I learned there was no hard pull and about the 3X CLI method. Last year, I went from $5.8k to $17k, almost a decade after bottoming out under $6k. Fast forward to the present, I didn't want to push it asking for 3x ($50k+) this time. So yesterday, I requested $30k and was instantly approved
Great story and congrats on the new limit!
Congratulations! Your AMEX love story is inspiring!
Thanks for the comments everyone! Amex Blue is my favorite card along with Discover. A couple years ago, I bought a mid-level laptop on Amex. Within a week, I accidentally dropped it cracking the screen. Amex purchase protection covered it in full, no questions asked.
It's nice to hear my story was inspiring. Another bit of inspiration...a friend of mine still has a ch13 reporting. About 6 months from filing, his mailbox was flooded with sub-prime offers. 4 years after filing with consistent PIF payment history, his scores are in the 730 range. He isn't able to land an Amex or Discover card yet but has BoFA, Cap1, and Barclays. His Cap1 limit is $15k, the other 2 are close to $10k.
Amazing story and congratulations.
Thank you for sharing with us. Way to stick with it.
We see so many bad stories about credit cards these days.
I myself went 15 years with no credit cards or loans. This definitely makes me glad I have my BCE card though.