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Well, I hate a lot of things about Cap1. There was a time when it bordered on scorching white hot hatred. I will never forget or forgive the pain and suffering they put me through nor make peace with their awful corporate culture or protocol in dealing with customers or their abnoxious tri-pulls. They could be so much better as a company without being less profitable. But hey, whatever. I am not going to change them.
That being said, I am slowly changing them FOR MYSELF and hating them a little less. Today, after a 4th CLI request since getting the card in 6/12, I saw a jaw-dropping CLI on my Spark from $8500....to $23,500. Wow....to say the least. And this happens less than a month after an EXec Office intervention resulted in a successful CLI on my Plat from $1500 to $5000 along with the addtion of the Cash Rewards reward structure.
So, while I am still a big critic of Cap1, it's nice to see my persistence and card usage pay off. Now, if they could only be a better company in general. I think if they did what Toyota or Honda or Nissan did in terms creating a higher brand (Lexus, Acura, Infiniti), they could better compete with Amex on total customer experience beyond simply rewards.
How did you request this latest CLI? You didn't mention...
The Spark CLI that I just got was by "manual review". Bascially, you call customer service and request a CLI. Be sure to clarify that you don't want a HP. They may see if you have an instant CLI available. If you don't, you can request a manual review. The rep will ask you some questions about income and expenses and how much you want and a minimum that you would accept. The rep takes all this info and submits it to underwriting. Again, stress no HP. You will get a letter with answer in 7-10 days. However, you can check online every day to see if the limit suddenly goes up.
I haven't gotten the letter yet but I have been checking every day and I was beginning to lose hope since it had been a week. But it just happened this evening. I was quite thrilled. I have been spending an average of $12,000 per month with PIF every month.....shoe-horned into an $8500 limit. First it was $5000!! Took 4 months to get it to $8500 on my third request. They could clearly see the mutliple payments every month and I told them that this was getting tiring and I wanted a higher limit.
Just some advice on calling:
It's a personal preference of mine but when calling about my personal card, I always call the escalation line. I found it here: http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Credit-Cards/Backdoor-Numbers/td-p/408066
When you call the escalation line, you go immediately to an intelligent senior account rep who is a native speaker and doesn't read from cue cards.
I find Cap1 personal card services reps simply terrible. Cap1 BUSINESS is a different story entirely. They are great.