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Well, seems like they're graduating for me. I went in to speak to them on Monday after receiving a letter stating that my annual fee would be due soon, and the banker looked over my account and agreed that I should be eligible for an unsecured card. So we did the application, and then he told me that I'd know in a few days if I'd been approved or not, which seemed.... suspicious. Anyway, logged in last night, and my secured card is showing up as closed. This morning, I get a phone call from my branch banker saying that I'd been approved for a new card, and I should get a letter with details about my rates and limit in the mail pretty soon.
So yeah, in under a year I've gone from having no credit history (having moved to the US from the UK), to having a $3500 card with Chase, $750 with Capital One (which I'll just keep open unless the stick an AF on it), and my new mystery limit with Wells Fargo (presumably at least $1000, as that was my security deposit).
And so yeah, I also now have $1000 of my money back to spend on whatever I want.
@Anonymous wrote:Well, seems like they're graduating for me. I went in to speak to them on Monday after receiving a letter stating that my annual fee would be due soon, and the banker looked over my account and agreed that I should be eligible for an unsecured card. So we did the application, and then he told me that I'd know in a few days if I'd been approved or not, which seemed.... suspicious. Anyway, logged in last night, and my secured card is showing up as closed. This morning, I get a phone call from my branch banker saying that I'd been approved for a new card, and I should get a letter with details about my rates and limit in the mail pretty soon.
So yeah, in under a year I've gone from having no credit history (having moved to the US from the UK), to having a $3500 card with Chase, $750 with Capital One (which I'll just keep open unless the stick an AF on it), and my new mystery limit with Wells Fargo (presumably at least $1000, as that was my security deposit).
And so yeah, I also now have $1000 of my money back to spend on whatever I want.
Congratulations on the new unsecured card. But that doesn't sound like a graduation to me. That's applying for a new card and closing the old one, which hurts your average age of accounts, adds a hard inquiry and adds a new credit account to your credit report. Those aren't unnecessarily terrible things, but true graduation looks much better on the credit report.
The idea of graduating is that they upgrade your current card, they may close your secured account but they will back-date your new account and it will show up looking like the same account on your credit report (generally). You don't need any application to get graduated, the bank bases it on how responsible you've been with the card and how good your credit looks on their history.
The result is a nice new unsecured credit account that looks like the same account you've had all along. No closed account, no new inquiry, no new credit account. Just a new higher line of credit and removing the word "secured" from the account notes on the report.
@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:Well, seems like they're graduating for me. I went in to speak to them on Monday after receiving a letter stating that my annual fee would be due soon, and the banker looked over my account and agreed that I should be eligible for an unsecured card. So we did the application, and then he told me that I'd know in a few days if I'd been approved or not, which seemed.... suspicious. Anyway, logged in last night, and my secured card is showing up as closed. This morning, I get a phone call from my branch banker saying that I'd been approved for a new card, and I should get a letter with details about my rates and limit in the mail pretty soon.
So yeah, in under a year I've gone from having no credit history (having moved to the US from the UK), to having a $3500 card with Chase, $750 with Capital One (which I'll just keep open unless the stick an AF on it), and my new mystery limit with Wells Fargo (presumably at least $1000, as that was my security deposit).
And so yeah, I also now have $1000 of my money back to spend on whatever I want.
Congratulations on the new unsecured card. But that doesn't sound like a graduation to me. That's applying for a new card and closing the old one, which hurts your average age of accounts, adds a hard inquiry and adds a new credit account to your credit report. Those aren't unnecessarily terrible things, but true graduation looks much better on the credit report.
The idea of graduating is that they upgrade your current card, they may close your secured account but they will back-date your new account and it will show up looking like the same account on your credit report (generally). You don't need any application to get graduated, the bank bases it on how responsible you've been with the card and how good your credit looks on their history.
The result is a nice new unsecured credit account that looks like the same account you've had all along. No closed account, no new inquiry, no new credit account. Just a new higher line of credit and removing the word "secured" from the account notes on the report.
I believe this is how Wells Fargo does it though (close old, open new)
Also I don't know any of the secured cards that don't pull credit before graduating them.
Well, whichever, I'm in a much better position than I was a year ago. And a pull of my credit is inevitable I guess, however they do it.
I just called the executive department at Wells Fargo. They confirmed for me that they are not graduating secured cards at this time. This was on 6Oct2010 at 2:30 pm CST. They said they are actively working on it, but they do nto have any plans to initiate the program in the immediate future.
hey new account or not, if you have built up a 12 month history with them and have improved your credit substantially, seems like a good decision to me to apply for unsecured, I'm sure underwriting is considering the fact that you did have the secured card. Granted I would prefer to keep the history of other account and not have a new open, but being unsecured out weighs the negatives to me in my opinion
@Creditaddict wrote:
I believe this is how Wells Fargo does it though (close old, open new)
Also I don't know any of the secured cards that don't pull credit before graduating them.
I may be entirely incorrect, but I was under the impression that no action was needed when a card gets graduated. You find out because the bank notifies you that they're graduating the card.
If that's the case (again, I may be completely wrong, my WF card has not been graduated) then there would be no application. Without an application and your consent they cannot do a hard pull. I'm sure they would at least do a soft pull, but those don't count against you. It should just a product upgrade like any other.
@Anonymous wrote:
@Creditaddict wrote:
I believe this is how Wells Fargo does it though (close old, open new)
Also I don't know any of the secured cards that don't pull credit before graduating them.
I may be entirely incorrect, but I was under the impression that no action was needed when a card gets graduated. You find out because the bank notifies you that they're graduating the card.
If that's the case (again, I may be completely wrong, my WF card has not been graduated) then there would be no application. Without an application and your consent they cannot do a hard pull. I'm sure they would at least do a soft pull, but those don't count against you. It should just a product upgrade like any other.
I just have experience with BofA and National City... Bofa requires 9 on time payments to consider graduating and they do a hard pull, National city was 12 months and they also do a hard pull. you may be able to just keep your secured card and not have a credit pull but the point for me was to build enough history to get unsecured as fast as possible so I asked them to graduate.
@Creditaddict wrote:
I just have experience with BofA and National City... Bofa requires 9 on time payments to consider graduating and they do a hard pull, National city was 12 months and they also do a hard pull. you may be able to just keep your secured card and not have a credit pull but the point for me was to build enough history to get unsecured as fast as possible so I asked them to graduate.
That's a lot more experience than myself I guess that does make sense. I stand corrected. Did you have to file an app for your new cards? And did they back date the new accounts?