I got an offer in the mail to apply for Chase Freedom, went online and was instantly approved for a whopping $400! My credit has been improving steadily for the past 8 months or so (from about 590 to 680ish now) and I'm happy to get any approval at all given that I have one paid CA from 2 years ago and a half-dozen or so 30 and 60 day lates from student loans. However, $400 seems like a preposterously tiny limit... I'd like to ask for a CLI and am wondering about the best timing. The frontline CSR said that Chase would do a 6-month auto CLI but I wasn't ready to request a CLI right away without doing more research. From reading the forums it seems like Chase will only do customer-request CLI's with a hard pull, which is fine with me since I don't plan on applying for more cards in the near future.
Should I call the backdoor number immediately? Or wait until I receive the card next week and call upon activation? Or should I just roll with it and wait for Chase to bump up the CLI on their own or perhaps pester them a few months down the road?
The only other card I have is an ex-WaMu Chase plain jane MC with a $1,000 limit which I've had for about 6 years with near-perfect payment history. It now has a balance of about $20 so I have very low utilization. I'm also considering asking them to transfer some of my credit limit (NOT a balance transfer) to my new Freedom so that I can have some more flexibility with the 0% interest promotion. I plan on making a relatively large ($1500-$2000) purchase in the next month and would like to get some rewards out of it. I have the cash to back up the purchase so I'm not just racking up debt...
Thoughts?
UPDATE: Applied for Citi Forward and approved for $5,000! Looks like Chase is just being stingy.
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