Citi allows only 1 card in 6 months??

[yfan]

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@red259 wrote:

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@yfan wrote:

And how many people would that take for FT to shed the conventional wisdom? More than one? More than 3? What's the "freakout threshold"? "Hardcore churners" may be busy with other churning opportunities, they may not like Citi products, whatever. An absent of reporting to the contrary is not evidence of the positive. Only reports of the positive are evidence of the positive. Only reporting of denials within a week coupled with approvals after a week can serve as evidence of the "rule." If these "hardcore churners" aren't applying within the week (which it would stand to reason they aren't if they really believe in the rule), then their data fails to prove the first part of the rule. You then have to get data for the first part of the rule outside of hardcore churners.

Not saying the data is easy to get. But without it, the rule as a whole does not withstand its test.

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I just reviewed two threads about AA cards on FT and there was over 7800 individual posts between the two of them You are grasping at straws if you think that these cards are not being applied for/churned. In terms of needing data about being denied for too many apps in under 8 days I refer you to the original post that started this thread as evidence of that. Again nobody claimed the rule is enforced every single time, but the exceptions to it are few and far between and people ignore the general rule at their peril. By the way the data has already been established. There are actually posts on FT of husband and wife doing tests where one gets denied after two days and other gets approved after eight days using same income etc. There are other datapoints as well and Long mentioned that some people received confirmation from citi about this. I've spent enough time reading through threads about it. if you are that interested feel free to do your own research, but its not like someone magically pulled this out of a hat. 

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Personal animosity ("you are grasping for straws") aside, two things:

First, 7800 posts don't tell us anything about how many individual data points there were - as we see here, a single data point can spur many, many "posts" that aren't data points themselves, so while your review is appreciated (although we are not sure if you have actually read all of those 7800 posts - have you?), you have not disclosed the actual number of data points, which side of the so-called "rule" each data point supports, and if there were ANY (at all) data points that contradicted what you view to be a trend. Existance of threads with lots of posts in them do not by themselves construct lots of data points. Further, you said yourself your review only covered AA cards, which is hardly all Citi cards.

Second, if it isn't uniformly enforced, I am not certain it can really be called a rule. I have recounted my own experience here as well as one other person who got 2 Citi cards within a day, which can easily counter the husband-wife example. What you are calling a "rule" may only be a "rule" for certain credit profiles (e.g. what you are calling "churners") and not to people who don't consistently app (2011 was the first time I applied for cards after a pretty long break and my inquiries at the first app were zero). I don't know that to be the case, but because of your admitted sample bias (FT, assertion that Citi cards are churned) you don't know that not to be the case, either.

I hope we can agree that credit boards do not exist only to seve one segment of credit users - i.e. constant applicants and/or churners. If they also exist for people who only app occasionally (like years apart) and want information, they should be allowed to hear from people who are from their segment of consumers rather than to accept as holy word the experiences of constant credit seekers.

[yfan]

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@onstar wrote:

RULE does not mean that it's permanent or that it is the same for everyone. Citi has a 8 day rule. Amex has a 180 day rule. Chase has a 5 card rule. These are all rules, but they do not necessarily apply to everybody. It just means that this is their SOP. 

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I understand that, but even if we were to for a moment accept this commonality in credit boards, what if what is being called a rule here is actually the exception and what people seem to view as exception is the actual rule? What if the exception is made for people with credit profiles that indicate constant and/or regular credit seeking, but as a rule doesn't apply to the vast majority of applicants whose profiles are probably clean or nearly clean of credit card inquiries with relatively long credit age? If the "rule" is a rule for only a small segment of customers (constant credit seekers), then it is not a rule, it is the exception.

[onstar]

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@yfan wrote:

Second, if it isn't uniformly enforced, I am not certain it can really be called a rule. I have recounted my own experience here as well as one other person who got 2 Citi cards within a day, which can easily counter the husband-wife example. What you are calling a "rule" may only be a "rule" for certain credit profiles (e.g. what you are calling "churners") and not to people who don't consistently app (2011 was the first time I applied for cards after a pretty long break and my inquiries at the first app were zero). I don't know that to be the case, but because of your admitted sample bias (FT, assertion that Citi cards are churned) you don't know that not to be the case, either.

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This is true for ALL RULES in the credit world. They do not apply uniformly to everyone. They are rules for certain credit profiles that don't apply to other credit files. When things happen almost all the time (maybe >92%?), then people will call it a rule. There is NO rule that is 100%.

[onstar]

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@yfan wrote:

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@onstar wrote:

RULE does not mean that it's permanent or that it is the same for everyone. Citi has a 8 day rule. Amex has a 180 day rule. Chase has a 5 card rule. These are all rules, but they do not necessarily apply to everybody. It just means that this is their SOP. 

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I understand that, but even if we were to for a moment accept this commonality in credit boards, what if what is being called a rule here is actually the exception and what people seem to view as exception is the actual rule? What if the exception is made for people with credit profiles that indicate constant and/or regular credit seeking, but as a rule doesn't apply to the vast majority of applicants whose profiles are probably clean or nearly clean of credit card inquiries with relatively long credit age? If the "rule" is a rule for only a small segment of customers (constant credit seekers), then it is not a rule, it is the exception.

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There's a reason why many boards call it a rule vs. the exception. Because it happens far more often than not.

[yfan]

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@onstar wrote:

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@yfan wrote:

Second, if it isn't uniformly enforced, I am not certain it can really be called a rule. I have recounted my own experience here as well as one other person who got 2 Citi cards within a day, which can easily counter the husband-wife example. What you are calling a "rule" may only be a "rule" for certain credit profiles (e.g. what you are calling "churners") and not to people who don't consistently app (2011 was the first time I applied for cards after a pretty long break and my inquiries at the first app were zero). I don't know that to be the case, but because of your admitted sample bias (FT, assertion that Citi cards are churned) you don't know that not to be the case, either.

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This is true for ALL RULES in the credit world. They do not apply uniformly to everyone. They are rules for certain credit profiles that don't apply to other credit files. When things happen almost all the time (maybe >92%?), then people will call it a rule. There is NO rule that is 100%.

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But if the credit profiles for which the so-called rule is applicable aren't the majority (or at least a plurality), then it is not a rule at all. It is an exception.

[yfan]

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@onstar wrote:

There's a reason why many boards call it a rule vs. the exception. Because it happens far more often than not.

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We don't know that. What you are saying - and I don't even agree with that - is that it happens to far more people who participate in credit obsessed boards than not. That does not give us a general or a representative accounting of all Citi apps. That's my point, partly. This small segment of credit seekers are in a hurry to establish their expereince as the "rule", and I am not convinced.

[Anonymous]

i find "rules" are a way to shut folks up when they protest too much and there may just be a "smidge" || <- of chance that they have a concrete foundation of why they should be able to do xyz and than they're shut with the "well it's a rule, you cannot do so"

or or it could just be that they won't stop protesting even if in their heart they know they're pushing it..and the rep has nothing else to say.

In my personal experience, i've seen so many exceptions I don't even know if they can be called exceptions anymore.

[onstar]

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@Anonymous wrote:

i find "rules" are a way to shut folks up when they protest too much and there may just be a "smidge" || <- of chance that they have a concrete foundation of why they should be able to do xyz and than they're shut with the "well it's a rule, you cannot do so"

or or it could just be that they won't stop protesting even if in their heart they know they're pushing it..and the rep has nothing else to say.

In my personal experience, i've seen so many exceptions I don't even know if they can be called exceptions anymore.

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It's not really to shut people up. It's to give a plausible explanation.

As in, Citi is KNOWN to do this. This is their typical behavior.

As for the exceptions, they certainly depend on the rules. Maybe this Citi rule isn't as enforced as other rules, but there is a reason why this has been brought up in several different sites. Generally, if more than a couple sites mention it, then that means that it should be expected far more often than not.

Anyway, if you (generic you) think certain rules don't apply to you, then you can choose to ignore the advice given here. Really, this rule is no different than any of the other rules here.

[red259]

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@yfan wrote:

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@red259 wrote:

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@yfan wrote:

And how many people would that take for FT to shed the conventional wisdom? More than one? More than 3? What's the "freakout threshold"? "Hardcore churners" may be busy with other churning opportunities, they may not like Citi products, whatever. An absent of reporting to the contrary is not evidence of the positive. Only reports of the positive are evidence of the positive. Only reporting of denials within a week coupled with approvals after a week can serve as evidence of the "rule." If these "hardcore churners" aren't applying within the week (which it would stand to reason they aren't if they really believe in the rule), then their data fails to prove the first part of the rule. You then have to get data for the first part of the rule outside of hardcore churners.

Not saying the data is easy to get. But without it, the rule as a whole does not withstand its test.

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I just reviewed two threads about AA cards on FT and there was over 7800 individual posts between the two of them You are grasping at straws if you think that these cards are not being applied for/churned. In terms of needing data about being denied for too many apps in under 8 days I refer you to the original post that started this thread as evidence of that. Again nobody claimed the rule is enforced every single time, but the exceptions to it are few and far between and people ignore the general rule at their peril. By the way the data has already been established. There are actually posts on FT of husband and wife doing tests where one gets denied after two days and other gets approved after eight days using same income etc. There are other datapoints as well and Long mentioned that some people received confirmation from citi about this. I've spent enough time reading through threads about it. if you are that interested feel free to do your own research, but its not like someone magically pulled this out of a hat. 

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Personal animosity ("you are grasping for straws") aside, two things:

First, 7800 posts don't tell us anything about how many individual data points there were - as we see here, a single data point can spur many, many "posts" that aren't data points themselves, so while your review is appreciated (although we are not sure if you have actually read all of those 7800 posts - have you?), you have not disclosed the actual number of data points, which side of the so-called "rule" each data point supports, and if there were ANY (at all) data points that contradicted what you view to be a trend. Existance of threads with lots of posts in them do not by themselves construct lots of data points. Further, you said yourself your review only covered AA cards, which is hardly all Citi cards.

Second, if it isn't uniformly enforced, I am not certain it can really be called a rule. I have recounted my own experience here as well as one other person who got 2 Citi cards within a day, which can easily counter the husband-wife example. What you are calling a "rule" may only be a "rule" for certain credit profiles (e.g. what you are calling "churners") and not to people who don't consistently app (2011 was the first time I applied for cards after a pretty long break and my inquiries at the first app were zero). I don't know that to be the case, but because of your admitted sample bias (FT, assertion that Citi cards are churned) you don't know that not to be the case, either.

I hope we can agree that credit boards do not exist only to seve one segment of credit users - i.e. constant applicants and/or churners. If they also exist for people who only app occasionally (like years apart) and want information, they should be allowed to hear from people who are from their segment of consumers rather than to accept as holy word the experiences of constant credit seekers.

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I don't know where you get personal animosity from a commonly used phrase. This is something that has been covered in numerous places on the internet. There are datapoints in the threads and I have provided you with more than enough information to find these threads if you really want to research it. I am not going to devote my night to searching through several thousand posts to give you each datapoint. The OP who started this thread is a datapoint and citi specifically gave the reason too many apps. It has been made clear that there are exceptions to this general rule. You seem to want everyone to agree with you that there is no general rule and no matter what is said or what examples get provided to you seem intent on sticking with that position. That is your prerogative, but I'm not going to expend anymore time on this with you.  

[DrZoidberg]

In the credit world rules are broken. I had a Citi CSR tell me Citi will not move a CL. I even read it here, on FT and other sites that backed that claim. I made one call to my Prestige card number and moved some CL between cards.