I have an Amazon Prime Chase credit card almost 2 years old. They started me out at $500, granted a $5,000 increase when I requested an increase in May 2017 & automatically gave me a $3,000 increase in December 2017 following an account review. So I was up to $8,500. Based on my FICO scores around those times, it seems they may be going by score ranges to determine how much to grant and at $8,500, I was around 700.
Well my ex-husband's Bank of America card was still on my report with me as an Authorized User. That was very helpful at the time because he always pays his bills on time & it was the oldest account on my record (18 years) & only around $1,000 was being reported from month to month then.
But, in the past several months, it's been reporting $13,000 (since we coparent I know what's going on over there, so I'm assuming this was the HVAC he had to buy back in June). Anyway, I watched this number for a while to see if it would go down & it hasn't. So I decided that while I knew I would take a credit age hit, I would also benefit on taking my credit utilization down (by removing his balance from my report) & have the ability to control my utilization 100%.
Last Nov/Dec when I hit 700ish, it seemed 3-4% utilization helped me the most. But I couldn't get anywhere near that with his balance. So, in my mind, I thought I'd take the short-term hit, see how bad it was & have time to recover before I really care about buying a house in Spring 2020. However, I'm also renting a place that is only required to give me 30-days notice (owner is in foreign service & could return), so I need to make sure my credit score is as good as it can be at all times should I need to apply to a new place.
I'm a person who always pays my bills on time BUT ... my ex and I owned an office rental business & were getting divorced during the recession & many of the tenants were branch employees of companies with other locations. So the main offiice just told their employee to abandon their single office & the company stopped paying rent (none of which were individually significant enough to pay attorneys to go after in court ... it was truly the Wild Wild West ... every man for himself ... and I lost). This was my only income, so in struggling to pay my bills at the time, I now have 4 derogatories $6,000 total) that will fall off in late 2019 which are killing my score.
The top score I've been able to get is 700 (Dec 2017) & I feel decent about that in terms of being approved for new rental space if I need it. But now instead of heading toward that 700 again, my score turned around from 678ish & started going in the opposite direction. So my question is ... once I receive the letter from Chase explaining their specific reasons for doing this (which I only discovered doing my weekly account login), can I go back to them & ask for reconsideration?
The reason I ask this is that my mother said that I could add my name as an Authorized User on her oldest card (16 years) which should help my Credit Age (as all of my 7 cards are around 1 1/2-2 years old). I don't need to use her card or benefit from the extra credit available as my utilization is already at 1% (which I'm actually trying to keep at 3.5% because last year this seemed to give me a slightly better score). So I went ahead and added myself as an Authorized User & her card will report on 11/10.
So can I go back to Chase & ask them to reconsider once I see a positive impact of my Credit Age getting better (together with my low credit utilization) or do I need to wait a certain amount of time to request an increase? Chase pinged my report twice & I think they saw my score *before* his BoA had been removed. So I feel like if I recover my credit age and my credit utilization is good without his balance, my score might put me back in their $5,000-$8,500 bracket. Advice?
Congrats on the progress toward rebuilding. Sounds like you get there on your own at the end of 2019? If so, why sweat it?
why is the. Chase Amazon important to you if you are at 1% utilization? What other cards do you have?
I didn't know I could make paragraphs, so yeah, that's crazy hard to read. I'll go fix that next. I don't know what CLD is ... I'm assuming credit line decrease. So they took me from $8,500 to $1,000. I thought it was a mistake when I logged onto my account by coincidence the day after they did it (which is why I haven't gotten the letter explaining why yet).
Coming from a world in which I lived below my means, I knew absolutely nothing about credit when I was single. And my ex wanted to be a one-man show when it came to managing our joint finances.
It's not that I care so much about the Chase card as it is that all my other cards (5 credit + 2 store cards) are $500 Citi, $500 Athleta store, $750 CapOne, $1000 AMEX, $1000 Amazon Store, $1,000 Chase & $6,000 Discover. And since not everyone takes Discover, I don't like having that as my only decent credit limit. And I thought if Chase liked me enough in the past 2 years, maybe they'd be more apt to like me again than some other cards.
However, I also just read another post with someone complaining about Chase & respondents saying that they'd had problems getting approved for CLI but then being approved for a new card with either the same company or different company & being given a decent credit line. So I'm realizing that I was thinking that if Chase doesn't like me right now, no one else will either & that Discover giving me a $1,500 auto-bump shortly before Chase cut my limit was just timing.
One thing to remember is there will always be other lenders available to you, Chase isnt the only game in town
. That being said, their AA can have repercussions with other lenders until you fix what caused the AA in the first place. Best of luck, you can do it
. That being said, their AA can have repercussions with other lenders until you fix what caused the AA in the first place. Best of luck, you can do it
Okay I hate to be dumb, but what is AA? I mean I get through context what you mean, but can't figure out what AA stands for.
Also is there a place on this forum that defines all the abbreviations people use? When reading other posts, I've often jumped over to Google if I couldn't figure it out on my own.
Hey AJC... you back in the garden again?
Such a seedling... 😎
@AverageJoesCredit wrote:
One thing to remember is there will always be other lenders available to you, Chase isnt the only game in town
Thanks for the link Pizza1. I'm hoping the drop in Credit Age will be mostly remedied by adding me as Authorized User to 16+ year old card. The 25% utilization that was as a result of my ex's BoA card is down to <1%. Ironically, I was trying to hit 3.5%, so I had just done a calculation to pay Chase to that level before the closing date & paid it the day before this happened. They had actually already pinged my credit report twice the prior month, but I didn't know that yet. But it did feel like a slap in the face ... here I am trying to refine everything as I learn more & Chase comes & pulls the rug out.
Because of my 4 derogatories, there's really not much I can do to help my score besides wait them out, age my current cards, keep my util low & keep inquiries low (currently 1-1-0 & by Dec 0-0-0). At this point, I'm in a holding pattern except for diversifying my account types (currently only have loan from Affirm that only reports to Experian & closed mortgages). But I need to jump to a different board to get advice on the loan front.