Using cc for hotel deposits

[Anonymous]

I travel frequently and I have started to use my secured capital one solely for hotel deposits. 

1 I noticed this reports as no balance but limits my available credit. Should I make 1 small purchase a month and pay it off or is it okay to only use it this way?

2 How long does it typically take to get the available credit back? Prior to rebuilding my credit I used a prepaid debit card which takes 30 days to receive it back, but I've read multiple places it's better to use a credit card because you get it back much quicker.

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Your first question (#1) implies that you are interested in only using your card for this (securing a deposit) but that you would ideally like to make no real purchases on it, including the hotel bill.  Thus many months may go by like this, and you are wondering here whether the deposits will be enough to constitute activity on the card and prevent the issuer from cancelling it due to inactivity.

If so, then it's hard to for me to understand why your other questions would be real concerns: whether the issuer limits your available credit while the deposit is in place, how long it takes for the available credit to come back, etc.  Because you don't want to use the card for anything else, right?

Can you clarify which of the two concerns is your real one?  Unless I am missing something, you can't really have both.

[gibeon]

I think what the OP is worried about is if the OP has to stay at several hotels a month and each deposit is held for 30 days he may run out of available credit with which to authorize deposits.

OP, I would buy a coffee or a sandwich evwry now and then to show actual usage. Or if you subscribe to anything likr Spotify, Netflix, etc that is a fixed amount per month that you can auto-pay, maybe do that.

[Anonymous]

Typically hotel deposit on card should be refunded within 2-4 days

[Anonymous]

---

@gibeon wrote:
I think what the OP is worried about is if the OP has to stay at several hotels a month and each deposit is held for 30 days he may run out of available credit with which to authorize deposits.

OP, I would buy a coffee or a sandwich evwry now and then to show actual usage. Or if you subscribe to anything likr Spotify, Netflix, etc that is a fixed amount per month that you can auto-pay, maybe do that.

---

Ah!  I understand better now.  Sorry for the confusion.

Yes, the OP is right that he's not being charged (thus no transaction, no positive balance).  It's called a "hold" and the hold is released a few days afterward (as Discus mentions).  Unlike the situation with your debit card where you actually are getting money that was actually taken away refunded, here it is just a temporary hold (i.e. the capacity to charge you) that is being released.

It sounds like the central concern of the OP is that his card is a secured card and therefore doesn't have a high CL on it.

My guess is that the OP should just look at his travel patterns and try to gauge a worse case scenario.  How many nights does he stay in the shortest time frame available, including five extra business days for getting the hold released.  Since he does this fairly often, he should also carefully record exactly what happens at every stay for a little while -- exactly how much is the hold for, exactly when does it get released -- in other words, experiment and see what happens.

As far as how to prevent a CC from ever being cancelled, you certainly don't have to use it every month (which the OP though might be the case).  Buying something very small every 4-5 months is fine.  Just make sure it is something you actually really want or need.  People do get their cards cancelled for inactivity, but for people who have mentioned this happening to them it always seems to involve a card that was either (a) never used even once (in which case it might be cancelled after 6-7 months) or (b) was used initially but then went for MANY months in a row without being used.  It often takes a number of years of non use before an issuer will cancel it.

[takeshi74]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I noticed this reports as no balance but limits my available credit. Should I make 1 small purchase a month and pay it off or is it okay to only use it this way? 

---

What's your concern behind the question?  It doesn't matter for your hotel reservation.  Are you concerned about closure due to inactivity?  Is this a scoring concern since no balance is reporting if there is no other activity on the card?

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Typically hotel deposit on card should be refunded within 2-4 days

---

+1 Hotels vary so all we can really do is provide general information and the timeframe can and does vary.

[Anonymous]

The first one is a bigger concern. I actually just received my deposit 5 days later so now I am confident it won't hold up my available credit for 30 days. 

[Anonymous]

great advice, thank you. I will do this. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks will do!

[Anonymous]

Yes it is both, a closure concern and a scoring concern. I am trying to rebuild my credit as fast as possible, still mainly paying for everything with cash but things like hotels and rental cars I need to use my credit card.