Citi lifetime charges

[Anonymous]

Hi guys,

I tried doing a CLI on my Citi Double Costco Visa and got a rejection. Later I got a letter in the mail with the offical reasons why. The first reason says: "You have paid a low portion of your lifetime charges on one or more of your accounts with us." I have never heard of this reason. Can anyone please tell me what does it mean?

Usually they list reasons like high utilization or age of accounts or derrogatories, but I've never heard of "lifetime fees"

Thank you all.

[K-in-Boston]

Welcome to the forums.  Searching for that reason, I only see one post from back in February (and nowhere else on the inernet) with that wording and there were other reasons for the declined CLI as well.  Are you currently carrying a balance on the card?  To me it reads synonymous with "payments have been too low."  Do you have other Citi cards, including any CBNA-manged store cards?

[Anonymous]

I see. Thank you for the clarification. That makes more sense than their wording. Yes I do have a bit of a balance. 6k on a 9k limit. I also have a citi simplicity with a 4K limit that’s completely empty. I got that one 18 months ago for their 0% BT APR and paid it off over the last 18 months.

I wanted to combine the limits and kill the Simplicty so that the increased limit on the other one would reduce my utilization ratio, but that requires a HP so thought I’ll try a SP CLI first.

[K-in-Boston]

Unfortunately, 67% utilization on a card is quite high.  How that affects each person will be different.  If you have 30+ revolving accounts it likely won't matter much at all, but if you have only a few it can really sting.  And yes, Citi does treat account combinations like credit line increases.  The translation does appear to be: "the amount of money you have paid us back compared to how much we have loaned you is not enough," but that is likely combined with other factors in your credit profile.