In case there’s anyone out there who has a US Bank secured Visa, who is wondering what might happen when the one year ‘secured’ period is up, or if there’s anyone out there who’s thinking of applying for one of these, I thought I’d post on my experience, as it might be of interest to someone! From everything I’ve heard, BoA’s 99/500 card would be far more desirable to anyone thinking of getting a secured card, but still – US Bank is what I had, so US Bank is what I’ll post about! 
I moved to the US in April 2007, and as soon as I had my social security number, applied for a secured Visa through US Bank – my reason for going with them was nothing more than that I had my checking account with them (our apartment was about 10 seconds walk from a US Bank branch, so that’s where I set up a checking account first thing on the Monday morning after arriving in the country!). I gave them a money order for $500, which they held in a ‘security savings account’ (where it earned me all of about 13 cents over the course of a year), and in return I got a Visa card with a $500 limit. The bank took a few weeks to process the application, and then they had to send the card twice as I didn’t receive the first one – I ended up with an ‘account open’ date of June 6 2007. It ended up being my second card since arriving in the US, as a Macy’s sales assistant talked me into applying for a storecard less than 2 days after I got off the plane – I’m glad she did talk me into it, though, as the $100 limit they approved me for (with no social security number and no credit file at all) is now a $1400 one!
I made sure to use the card a lot, and mostly paid it off in full – but even when I carried a balance, I paid MUCH more than the minimum payment. The card stopped seeing quite so much action once I got my Delta SkyMiles in November, but I still made sure to use it for something every month, and pay it off. On time, every time, of course. When it hit its year’s anniversary, I was told that the procedure was to request an upgrade to another credit card product – the credit card team decide what to give you, you don’t choose what to apply for. They also base the decision on how you’ve used the card (although I’m sure they soft you to see what’s going on with your credit in general), rather than making you apply or doing a hard inq. You also get a new card and number, but one account ‘becomes’ the other – ie you keep the age, date opened, etc – it’s not a new account.
Weeellll… a couple of days after putting in the application to ‘upgrade’, I saw that my credit limit had increased from $500 to $1000. Not quite as generous as I was hoping for, especially given that by this time AmEx had upped my SkyMiles to $7400 (I also have a Capital One card with a $750 limit, and a $500 Banana Republic, in addition to the Macy’s card mentioned above… and a Delta Blue that isn’t reporting yet, so they won’t have seen that) – I was thinking I’d get at least a $2000 limit. Also, the card they gave me, it turns out, was a ‘US Bank Classic Visa’ – ie a card that does absolutely nothing, at all. I suppose it would be helpful if I told you the interest rate, but I can’t actually remember it – it was neither appalling bad, nor impressively low. Just blah. I got the new card in the mail a week or so later, and about a week after that I got the check for my $500 plus pitiful amount of interest.
Then I got the idea to ask if I could switch to something else. The reason I got this idea was that I was in the branch of US Bank that is where I work, and the teller said ‘oh! You have a preapproval!’ when I was paying some checks in. She then couldn’t find the information on said alleged preapproval, so said she would look into it and call me. She did, and called me as promised, all excited, because it was for a Platinum Visa with a 0% balance transfer offer until sometime in 2010, a really low interest rate, etc etc etc. And she said I was definitely approved for it. She still couldn’t find out how I was supposed to actually accept it, so she said she’d call card services and check…
…. And then she called me back to say she’d made a mistake, and that the preapproval was not for me, it was for my husband – duh!!! We do have very similar names, and a joint account… she’d failed to spot that the offer was not actually for me! 
Oh well!
ANYWAY (sorry, rambling post as usual!), that made me think I could at least call and ask about a product change – if my husband’s getting great offers from them (granted, he has a long credit history and mine is almost nonexistent, but he also has accounts formerly in collections and lower scores than mine, not that mine are amazing or anything!), maybe they would offer me something more interesting. I mentioned that I’d been hoping that as they are ‘my’ bank that we have our checking with, that I’d hoped they’d offer me something worthwhile, that I would love to use my US Bank card as my main card, but that compared to my ‘American Express cards that offer me all kinds of rewards and incentives to use them’, this one was blah in the extreme.
Upshot… the CSR got all excited and told me that I ‘most definitely’ can ‘upgrade’ to another product, but that (annoyingly) because my ‘Classic’ Visa is so new, I have to wait 3 months before calling to do it. She was enthusiastically telling me about their cashback card, and the various other rewards cards they have, so maybe they will let me switch to one of those.
Sorry, sorry, sorry for the long post – that wasn’t meant to be anything like as long, I could have summed it all up in a few sentences! But if I do go for a product change, I will let everyone know what the result is!
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-03-2008 05:23 PM
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-03-2008 05:25 PM
Message Edited by fevmlo on 07-03-2008 05:32 PM
Hello
There was no hard inquiry when I asked for them to switch me to an unsecured card - I have to say that surprised me, but they told me they mainly look at how you've handled THAT account rather than anything else. (Although I'm sure they must have softed me - they might SAY they base things on how you handle that account, but they must look at the whole picture too...!)
As for whether you can add money to raise your limit while the card's secured - no, apparently you can't do that (I did ask!) - the limit you choose and the $$$ you put down at opening (you can put down up to $10,000 apparently - can't imagine many people choose that option!!) is the limit you keep. You also can't 'graduate' the card - it's fully secured or nothing with them.