Discover and Amex bucketed

[Polly34]

Discover and Amex have bucketed me. I have 2 its that have beeing sitting at 3k cl's for 2 years. And 2 amex everydays/blue at 1k and 5k for over a year. Is the only thing to do is close them all and try again in a few months? 

[MissLiz]

Have you ever requested a CLI or are you just hoping for an auto CLI? If you have requested and been denied, what reasons have they given you? Has your profile changed since you opened the cards? How is your utilization across all active cards? What are your current limits on other cards in your profile? How is your usage?

Discover seems to have more stringent standards for CLI's than some other lenders and if you're not showing much usage, they typically won't give out those large CLI's you see with other creditors. 

[IsambardPrince]

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@Polly34 wrote:

Discover and Amex have bucketed me. I have 2 its that have beeing sitting at 3k cl's for 2 years. And 2 amex everydays/blue at 1k and 5k for over a year. Is the only thing to do is close them all and try again in a few months? 

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Discover says they don't bucket. That's what they told me.

They have really conservative CLI standards. Every bank has its own personality.

Discover is stingy with CLIs and mostly gives them to people who owe them a lot of interest. They get people in trouble with the card then sue almost everyone who falls over, and unlike other banks they don't usually even bother to sell the debt, they come for you and even if you negotiate it, it will be the amount you originally spent.

That's their "risk" appetite. They end up getting it all back somehow. And they don't see the point in baiting the hook for people who won't bite.

If you don't spend much money on the cards, they also tend to ignore you for special offers that are targeted by email. Especially if you always pay in full and never owe them any of it back.

Like AmEx, sometimes Discover gives people with bad credit the opportunity to prove they aren't a total financial mess, by connecting to the bank (AmEx) to see if you actually have any money, or giving them a small limit of like $500 and seeing if they manage it well.

AmEx wouldn't give my mom a dime after looking at her bank account.

Discover gave her $500 and she went over her limit, is always over her limit, and makes the minimum payments, so they refuse to give her anything else. "Why do you think we're going to raise your limit when you can't even successfully manage a limit we give to teenagers?", basically.

[Jnbmom]

Seriously you have negative things to say about all institutions @IsambardPrince why do you even have credit cards.

That is not even remotely true about Discover . They love you to use their card and pay it off rinse and repeat then the CLI will come and I don't want a 6 paragraph page about why this is incorrect .

[IsambardPrince]

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@Jnbmom wrote:

Seriously you have negative things to say about all institutions @IsambardPrince why do you even have credit cards.

That is not even remotely true about Discover . They love you to use their card and pay it off rinse and repeat then the CLI will come and I don't want a 6 paragraph page about why this is incorrect .

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"Money is the root of all evil."

"More?"

Yes please.

Discover always ignores me for CLIs and when they do crap one out, it's an insult. 4 years later and if I put one single major purchase on the card, it would be almost maxed. I've had other banks give me ten times more than Discover has grown my card to in four YEARS, and they always have a reason.

Neither me nor my spouse, which have never done anything to piss off Discover, other than not owing them interest, have gotten exactly ONE targeted email offer, for $40 when you spend $300, and that was in 2022 on his card. They've never sent me anything.

When I called Retention to see if they had all these offers people say they get, they said no.

They only do things for people who manage to lose an incredible amount of money to Discover (but always pay what they borrowed and more), it seems.

So to me it obviously boils down to "We're not going to rub your back unless you're paying us interest."

So it comes back around and I don't use their card unless it has a 5% category that interests me.

[IsambardPrince]

You want me to say one good thing about Discover. Here's one good thing about Discover.

They gave me a card right out of bankruptcy and for a while I used it heavily to establish that I was paying my bills again without the gigantic boot on my neck from my ex's malfeasance which drove me into bankruptcy.

It opened the doors to other banks that have actually taken me seriously as my credit profile recovered. 

But Discover's card rewards structure has stagnated. They took almost all the card network benefits that Visa, MC, AmEx have away including purchase protection, and they seem to be circling over the airport and trying to get acquired by Capital One and just don't seem to care about anything else anymore.

They've had major layoffs, they sold their student loan division and fired a lot of my neighbors who worked there, etc. etc.

I don't feel that they're interested in innovating so much as continuing to exist while hoping the FTC clears the merger, which is not guaranteed because they've been dusting off the Sherman Act again lately. They just won a major case against Google and now they're trying to block Kroger/Albertson's.

All banks basically have the same goal. It's to create a level of indebtedness that is both oppressive, yet won't destabilize you enough to quit giving them your money. That's why I don't like them. Why I keep doing business with them is it's gotten rather hard to say no.

I think we're at a place with Discover where the cards are active enough that they won't close the account, we always pay our bills in full so they have no incentive to really retain our business by pretending to offer us things while picking it back out of our other pocket, they can't sue us because we never owe them anything, so they just let us be.

It's not the worst place to be. The alternative is you could be one of these people that maxes the card out, can't pay, and gets a summons, or pays interest all the time and after you donate $5,000 to the bank they send you a restaurant offer for a few months.

[Gregory1776]

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@IsambardPrince wrote:

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@Polly34 wrote:

Discover and Amex have bucketed me. I have 2 its that have beeing sitting at 3k cl's for 2 years. And 2 amex everydays/blue at 1k and 5k for over a year. Is the only thing to do is close them all and try again in a few months? 

---

Discover says they don't bucket. That's what they told me.

They have really conservative CLI standards. Every bank has its own personality.

Discover is stingy with CLIs and mostly gives them to people who owe them a lot of interest. They get people in trouble with the card then sue almost everyone who falls over, and unlike other banks they don't usually even bother to sell the debt, they come for you and even if you negotiate it, it will be the amount you originally spent.

That's their "risk" appetite. They end up getting it all back somehow. And they don't see the point in baiting the hook for people who won't bite.

If you don't spend much money on the cards, they also tend to ignore you for special offers that are targeted by email. Especially if you always pay in full and never owe them any of it back.

Like AmEx, sometimes Discover gives people with bad credit the opportunity to prove they aren't a total financial mess, by connecting to the bank (AmEx) to see if you actually have any money, or giving them a small limit of like $500 and seeing if they manage it well.

AmEx wouldn't give my mom a dime after looking at her bank account.

Discover gave her $500 and she went over her limit, is always over her limit, and makes the minimum payments, so they refuse to give her anything else. "Why do you think we're going to raise your limit when you can't even successfully manage a limit we give to teenagers?", basically.

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That has been my experience with Discover as well. However, I do have a large credit limit with them, 27,000 it hasn't been able to move in a year or two as I have not been caring a balance on it, and haven't paid a nickel in interest in a couple years on that card. Previously when I have been carrying a balance, through a balance transfer offer, they gave me or some other reason, that is when they increase my limit. Don't need more with them, card isn't worth having that much of a limit with them excluding keeping your Utl low on a BT. 

I have not gotten a BT offer in ages with them, and the fee is high. But 12 months or 10 months  a 5% fee could be worth it.

[Gregory1776]

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@Jnbmom wrote:

Seriously you have negative things to say about all institutions @IsambardPrince why do you even have credit cards.

That is not even remotely true about Discover . They love you to use their card and pay it off rinse and repeat then the CLI will come and I don't want a 6 paragraph page about why this is incorrect .

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So don't read it. I found it applicable to myself. All her posts share something valuable and I quite agree with her assessment on things because of the things I have gone through the past 8 years. If you don't like anybody's comment, you don't have to contribute. Stop being so pissed off about certain people.

She has something valuable to share,  if you don't like her long form and if it's too much for your 7 second TikTok brain to digest... scroll on! 

[Gregory1776]

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@Polly34 wrote:

Discover and Amex have bucketed me. I have 2 its that have beeing sitting at 3k cl's for 2 years. And 2 amex everydays/blue at 1k and 5k for over a year. Is the only thing to do is close them all and try again in a few months? 

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We would need more information on your credit profile, as well as your income and living situation. There is no way to really determine why you are where you are. Just continue using them, responsibly, in such a way that you benefit the most from it. Walmart and grocery shopping, 1500 for the quarter. And then leave it alone. IMO. It has no further use than the $75 bucks you'll get.

[Windchill92]

To chip in to the OG question @Polly34, I think Discover & Amex are two who tend to prefer for you to pay in full (PIF), but are ok with you carrying a balance from time 2 time.

@IsambardPrince, any consumer can have a bad experience with a company and continue to talk sh*t forever and ever about them. While I don't use my AU Discover, I truly don't think Discover [widely] has a bad reputation like you make them out to be. It's all a matter of perspective, both from an ethical and business strategy standpoint. When a publicly-traded financial company that handles  bookoos of $$$ also makes a profit from their extended credit and/or liabilities, are they doing wrong?

Even if FIs tell all their customers w/ a straight face that they need to PIF, I guarantee you they have a guilty pleasure of them all carrying balances but paying a smidge more than the minimum. Strategy wise, I also don't particularly like Amex's direction they're taking the refreshed charge cards (Plat + Gold), but their strategy seems to be working based on Q2 results. I haven't had a bad experience w/ Citi yet, but I think we can agree that them, Synchrony, CreditOne, etc. have built a behavioral rapsheet for themselves.

I hope Discover & Capital One will come out of the acquisition even better than they are now, but I won't hold my breath on it.