I have had a Discover It card since 11/18 (my first major card) that was stuck at the $5500SL until earlier this month when they gave me a $1500 CLI to $7000. I ran almost $40K through my card in the first year and have perfect payment history on it. I'm in the same boat as you being that my oldest card is my lowest limit card.
It's been my experience that Discover does seem to bucket cards for some people, although a lot of people never saw that with their cards. The code I got for more than 2 years was "not enough experience at current credit line". I SD'd the card for months and the reason changed to "Not enough use in current month(s)." I made a fairly large purchase to take advantage of 5% PayPal quarter and let it report with a little over $1000 on it. I asked a few weeks ago, and they finally granted me the $1500 CLI. They recently gave me a 0% for 12 offer, so I'm going to stretch out this balance into payments, so hopefully I'll get another in a few months.
@MarkintheHV wrote:I know Cap1 seems to hold credit lines to a certain limit if you got the card with less than perfect credit, even after your credit improves they wont break that ceiling (I know I have one stuck at $7.5k and they will not increase it for anything).
I had a discover card that had an initial credit line of $5.5 (still had my BKs on it) and even though I ran everything through that card, and pif every month, they would not give me a CLI. Does anyone know if Discover limits your cli based on your credit report when you got the card, or will they recognize improved credit and CLI based on that? I am wondering if I should apply for another discover card since my BKs are gone from all my reports? My other cards have CLs between 18k-35k.
Based on my experience, they do recognize improved credit and grant CLI requests. I've written about my Discover card numerous times; here's the short version: I inherited it from my mom; they transferred it to my name when she died; because my credit wasn't great at the time, they had to dramatically cut the CL my mom had. That was in 2013.
My scores these days range from the very high 700s to the high 820s (depending on balances I'm carrying).
Somewhere along the line they spontaneously increased my CL, and then it just sat there. Every time I hit the love button and tried to get a CLI, I was immediately denied. I even wrote a thread about it! Then, like magic, three days after posting my thread, I hit the love button and got a nice CLI. It's still not as high as the original limit, but at least it's back in 5 figures. So, yes, it's definitely possible.
We know that Cap One buckets.
What Discover does is not knowable or comprehensible by mankind.
Discover will give you a CLI or they won't. Other than paying your bills on time, there is no community understanding of why they do or do not grant CLIs and how they arrive at CLI amounts.
This does not mean they won't give a CLI, just that there's no way of predicting. On the bright side, you can request it any time, and it's SP. Good luck!
I feel like they have put my card in a bucket since it started as secured my credit is over 100 pts higher perfect history and still I get little to no increase but I claiming it next increase will substantially higher or I'm going to close it and move on!
If Discover loves you. You got it made. They are very jealous. Use them before all others especially during a reuild and she opens the door. So yes Disco beats Cappy. Especially when it comes to CLI's. Cap1 is stuck with many at $100 recently.
Discover like Cap One uses ABS (Asset-Backed Securities) ... i.e.. Bucketing.. but for Miss Disco, it seems there are more soft limits than hard limits... meaning you can usually get out of the bucket eventually given scores and time... And as others have already said, put her in the front of the line for use during a rebuild .... seems to be jealous of others ... theres some truth to the it moniker... they want to be a daily driver... Its what got me to the overly generous limit i have today.. (in my case it was building vs rebuilding credit )
-J
