Following the news on the Marvel card being discontinued, I applied for the USB Altitute Go card primarily for the 4x points on dining and 2x on streaming, which made for a decent replacement of what I had used the Marvel card for. I woke up this morning to an email saying that I had been approved, and was thrilled. I know USB can be hit or miss, even with strong profiles, but when I was poking around the forums, I had seen several approvals around $4500, which I thought was decent for a new customer with pretty good scores. So my first thought upon opening the approval email and seeing a limit of $1,000 was "that can't be right..."
I haven't seen a SL this low in absolute ages. It did throw me for a loop a bit; when I wasn't doing great financially, I had a bucketed Quicksilver and a balance-chased AmEx and remember thinking that I would never get my credit scores over 660. I remember applying for the PNC Core back in 2016 and expecting a tiny limit, being surprised to get my then-highest ever starting limit at $10k, and feeling like I had finally turned a corner in my rebuild as my scores all hit 700 and kept increasing. I had pulled my financial house in order, got a mortgage, got several really good cards with decent starting limits and that had grown at a pretty good clip, and felt like I would qualify for any card that I wanted. Even though I do think of always being in a constant state of rebuild, my scores are in a really good place and my focus has been on getting my balances down, which I have made really good progress with. So, getting this $1k SL was a bit of a humbling experience and just reminded me too much of my pre-2016 financial sads (I know I'm ascribing far too much importance to this).
Regardless, $1,000 is far too little for me to make use of; the AltitudeGo SUB is 20,000 points for $1k of spend over three months, and I had planned to put through at least $500 in spending a month by shuffling my card spend around a bit. Managing the utilization with that amount of spend in comparison to a $1k limit is more work than I'm interested in doing. This SL also doesn't makes sense for where my current profile is; my scores are pretty good (they pulled Equifax; last I checked in February it was 747, and I suspect it's higher now), my overall utilization is 23%, and no higher than 50% on any one card. No lates or other baddies. So not the best profile, but not the worst either, and far beyond where I was a few years ago.
Anyway, I've decided that a hard pull is a hard pull, so I decided I have a few options:
- Call the recon line and ask them for a higher limit. All I want is to replace the Marvel card in my lineup, so if they match the $9k limit I have on that card, great. It gets all the spend that I planned, I get the SUB. Done and dusted.
- If they offer less than $9,000, say around the $4500 that I have seen most often around the forums, fine. I can at least work with that without having make many wash, rinse, repeat payments within a month to keep its utilization percentage in check. It would still also probably grow with responsible usage, continued lower balances on my other cards, and CLIs over time. If in a few months I still feel salty about my overall credit limit being brought down a little, the Venmo card will probably still be there.
- If they don't reconsider, I keep the $1k limit; I took a hard pull for it and and it's a new account, but I won't make much of an effort for the SUB because maintaining the card would absolutely require multiple payments a month. It will get my Starbucks card refills and not much else; the spend will certainly go to a new Venmo card, or elsewhere in my lineup.
I remember that many people with profiles much stronger than mine were approved for the USB Cash+ with limits of $500 and were successfully able to immediately recon, so, I called the underwriting line this morning. I was told that I had to wait to get the card until I could request a CLI. No recon. I also asked if they could confirm my score from their hard pull, and they only told me they pulled Equifax. So all in all, I am very disappointed...
Congratulations on your approval!
Good luck on your reconsideration SL. It may result in an additional HP inquiry.
Congratulations on your Go approval! ...
If you feel your profile supports it?, I would call and recon the limit.
I was approved for $5K, took the HP for a recon.. they upped the limit to $20K.
I feel it was worth the extra HP. (I cannot figure out why they just did not give me $20K in the first place
)
As always, YMMV.
Congrats on the approval!!! That's not uncommon for US Bank, ask all those approved with $500 Sl Cash Plus.
i'd take full advantage of that sub. A $1k threshold is easy to hit. You may have to make payments multiple times, but not a huge deal. Card will grow with SP CLI.
An HP may result in recon success, but it may not result in $9k. Good luck!
@AverageJoesCredit wrote:Sorry to read your disappointment. We've all been there. But im confused. If the sub is 1k spend for 3months and you planned to spend $500 monthly, 1k is perfectly suitable limit to at least make the sub. If you pif each month no need to fret the 50% usage. If your sl was $500 a little more strenuous but the sub would still be doable. Im the lowest income earner on myFico and thats about the only kind of sub i could achieve so i believe a $1k limit, until you can get more should suit your immediate needs. Just my 1 cent.
Thanks! I could easily make the sub, but since the idea of having a statement cut at 50% utilization makes me squirm, I know I would probably wind up making a payment after every individual transaction for fear of not making it in time to PIF. I really don't want to have to continuously check every day to see when a charge posts, so this preference is more for my own peace of mind than anything else...
@Anonymous wrote:
@blossom_rebuilding wrote:Following the news on the Marvel card being discontinued, I applied for the USB Altitute Go card primarily for the 4x points on dining and 2x on streaming, which made for a decent replacement of what I had used the Marvel card for. I woke up this morning to an email saying that I had been approved, and was thrilled. I know USB can be hit or miss, even with strong profiles, but when I was poking around the forums, I had seen several approvals around $4500, which I thought was decent for a new customer with pretty good scores. So my first thought upon opening the approval email and seeing a limit of $1,000 was "that can't be right..."
I haven't seen a SL this low in absolute ages. It did throw me for a loop a bit; when I wasn't doing great financially, I had a bucketed Quicksilver and a balance-chased AmEx and remember thinking that I would never get my credit scores over 660. I remember applying for the PNC Core back in 2016 and expecting a tiny limit, being surprised to get my then-highest ever starting limit at $10k, and feeling like I had finally turned a corner in my rebuild as my scores all hit 700 and kept increasing. I had pulled my financial house in order, got a mortgage, got several really good cards with decent starting limits and that had grown at a pretty good clip, and felt like I would qualify for any card that I wanted. Even though I do think of always being in a constant state of rebuild, my scores are in a really good place and my focus has been on getting my balances down, which I have made really good progress with. So, getting this $1k SL was a bit of a humbling experience and just reminded me far too much of my pre-2016 financial sads (I know I'm ascribing far too much importance to this).
Regardless, $1,000 is far too little for me to make use of; the AltitudeGo SUB is 20,000 points for $1k of spend over three months, and I had planned to put through at least $500 in spending a month by shuffling my card spend around a bit. Managing the utilization with that amount of spend in comparison to a $1k limit is more work than I'm interested in doing. This SL also doesn't makes sense for where my current profile is; my scores are pretty good (they pulled Equifax; last I checked in February it was 747, and I suspect it's higher now), my overall utilization is 23%, and no higher than 50% on any one card. No lates or other baddies. So not the best profile, but not the worst either, and far beyond where I was a few years ago.
Anyway, I've decided that a hard pull is a hard pull, so I decided I have a few options:
- Call the recon line and ask them for a higher limit. All I want is to replace the Marvel card in my lineup, so if they match the $9k limit I have on that card, great. It gets all the spend that I planned, I get the SUB. Done and dusted.
- If they offer less than $9,000, say around the $4500 that I have seen most often around the forums, fine. I can at least work with that without having make many wash, rinse, repeat payments within a month to keep it's utilization percentage in check. It would still also probably grow with responsible usage, continued lower balances on my other cards, and CLIs over time. If in a few months I still feel salty about my overall credit limit being brought down a little, the Venmo card will probably still be there.
- If they don't reconsider, I keep the $1k limit; I took a hard pull for it and and it's a new account, but I won't make much of an effort for the SUB because maintaining the card would absolutely require multiple payments a month. It will get my Starbucks card refills and not much else; the spend will certainly go to a new Venmo card, or elsewhere in my lineup.
I remember that many people with profiles much stronger than mine were approved for the USB Cash+ with limits of $500 and were successfully able to immediately recon, so, I called the underwriting line this morning. I was told that I had to wait to get the card until I could request a CLI. No recon. I also asked if they could confirm my score from their hard pull, and they only told me they pulled Equifax. So all in all, I am very disappointed...
Congratulations on your approval. 🙏🏻'g you get a higher CL once you receive the card in the mail. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Thanks! It occurred to me that maybe $1k was a temp limit, but I didn't think US Bank was known for that. It would be a nice surprise! Will certainly update if this comes to pass