How to get approved for a credit card/credit limit increase without hurting your score?

[FicoMike0]

@SRT4kid93 

You are trying to make sense of the scoring criteria. That's reasonable, but often futile. The advice you're getting is based on what works, not what makes sense. 

[noonway]

67 cards? OMG! I can't even imagine.  How does she keep track of the ones she needs to use next? 

[SRT4kid93]

Thank you,

This all makes a lot of sense. I believe that these things should be done by a human. For example, you go to a bank to apply for a loan, or you go to buy a car. You are given a person to make these decisions. But when I go to request a credit limit increase it's all computer based. And when they do this, they group people into a category and do not treat people on a case by case basis.

for example, someone has had a card for 5 months, they have amazing credit, but they get denied by the computer algorithm for an increase in credit cause their account hasn't been open 6 months. If they had a human, that personal could potentially push the increase through, but the computer will continue to deny them over and over. 

I understand why they do it, you don't pay computers a salary or healthcare. But when companies take shortcuts like that, or having all their customer service reps based out of the country. It significantly hurts their customer service. It seems customer service has gone way downhill since the birth of widespread computers.

back in the day you probably just called up, talked to a person and got treated like a human. 

[JoeRockhead]

@noonway   

1. a filing cabinet
2. a spreadsheet (at times this requires alcohol for some reason)
3. frozen credit reports
4. Reliance on fraud alerts, which I have to say have to say have been pretty solid. Last year she had 3 cards that were replaced due to fraudulent charges. In previous 4 years, there were none.
5. periodically checks the accounts online, and/or reads her statements

She's really good at keeping up with it all, never one blemish, never one late fee, and as previously stated, zero CC interest paid in 35+ years but, she does tire of the scope of it all from time to time.  You can check out This thread from around this time last year when she axed some of her cards worth $80k in credit limits.

[SRT4kid93]

Out of curiosity wouldn't companies start to decline her for new cards at some point? Companies don't like seeing someone with too many cards for multiple reasons. 

also, I can't even name 10-15 credit card companies, so I'm assuming she has multiple cards with each company right?

[noonway]

I snorted a little at spreadsheets with alcohol.

[pizzadude]

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@noonway wrote:

I snorted a little at spreadsheets with alcohol.

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Snorted a little....what ???

[MauiMan85297]

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@JoeRockhead wrote:

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@SRT4kid93 wrote:

Out of curiosity,

why is it bad to have more than 50% report a balance? As long as the balance reported on both cards is low, why does that matter?

This is totally true and WILL impact Fico scores.

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There's a score penalty on some Fico scoring models for "too many accounts with balances". Depending on your profile, it could be up to 20 to 30 points no matter how low the reported balance is on the accounts.

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