What do cards really want? High or very low utilization?

[Anonymous]

Reading through out the forum I see that to have a good fico score you should keep the revolving debt down on the cards, but since the score is not what I'm asking about we will just skip that.

I've gone through a lot of threads and I read that people say that credit cards like you to have pretty high utility with them so they can profit from you on interest and will be more willing to give you cli because if you have low utilities they won't profit much and you really don't need a cli since you are fine with the amount you have.

Others say that if you use keep your utilities high then creditors will be more hesitant to give you a cli because you can't pay what you own and if they gave you more you will probably not be able to pay them back.

I haven't read too much on usage though. Lets say for example that you have a $500.00 CL and you run $800.00 monthly through that card, will the creditors look just at that and ignore what your balance was when the statement cuts or do they just care about the balance?

The most I got is that different creditors prefer different things when it comes to this for CLI. So any input to clear this up for me will be appreciated.

[haulingthescoreup]

All I can do is offer my own experiences. I never carry balances; creditors are SOL if they expect a penny of interest out of me.

But I do use the cards a lot, generating income for them via usage fees, and I pay my balances before the statements close, so they get their money pretty quickly. I've had some very generous CLI's with several creditors; those are my 5-figure CL cards.

I do think that some of the starter cards might like to see lots of interest income --they're expecting this from their customers.

In these days, all the CCC's seem delighted about those who pay in full and promptly. They're so hurting for cash that they seem to appreciate PIF'ers.