combining cap1 cards?

[Anonymous]

So i have a secured cap1 card that hopefully will graduate and i can PC that to a QS for the 1.5% CB.  I have been told at 6 months (between new lines) i could apply for a QS.  Once the secured grads and i can PC to QS, then i could combine them into one and get a higher CL. I have been told ppl add a new one every year or so and combine them to get much higher limits than cap1 will CLI too.   Anyone with experience with this can help me to understand how it all works

Is there a time frame the card has to be open before you can combine them?

Do you get to pick which one?   (i'd hate to lose AAOA by doing all this)

Is it really any more effective then just asking for a CLI every 6mo?

Thanks for reading and any advise/expertise you can share.

[rmduhon]

You get the decide which card to close but that card has to be more than 6 months old and have a zero balance. Combining will reset the 6 month CLI counter since it's considered a CLI so try for one before combining. Opening a new account every 6 months to a year will lower the AAoA each time, but depending on the age of the rest of the accounts it could beeither a huge drop or a minimal drop.

[Anonymous]

I just did a CAP1 combine this morning.  Not exactly the same as what you're describing, but I had 2 CAP1 platinums, one that was originally a buyout card from Orchard bank and the other was a CAP1 Platinum that was always from CAP1.  Upgraded them both to QS1 "platinums" (they say QS1 on the front Platinum on the back).  Anyway I needed  to combine the Orchard bank Platinum (higher limit, but stupid high annual fee) with the "real" CAP1 card (lower limit, but lower annual fee and better APR) so I wanted to move the Orchard to the CAP1 originator.  All I had to do was log in to my account and request the combination under the account services tab.  They do let you choose which moves to which, but there are some eligibility requirements.  The ones I remember off the top of my head are that the card that you are closing has a zero balance at the time you combine and that there are no late payments in the last 6 months. 

When you do it online, first you choose which account you want to close and then you choose which one you want to combine it with. Once you do that, you agree to terms and conditions and as long as everything is in place as it should be in terms of the requirements, it happens basically instantaneously. I can't speak to whether or not it's faster to CLI every 6 months b/c I did my combining because they wouldn't increase one of my cards and it was an experiment to see if maybe only having one card instead of two QS1 cards would lead to more regular credit increases.

[Anonymous]

You won't lose AAoA by combining an old account into a new account.  The old account stays on for 10 more years.

Older accounts may be bucketed as subprime accounts unless you PC them into a possibly prime card version.  So your secured card may be forever bucketed as subprime, but you may be able to PC it into QS with no AF which may be a more prime account at that point.

Keep in mind that Capital One's cards aren't guaranteed to be a certain prime level by default.  There are people with subprime QS, mid prime QS, prime QS and probably super prime QS.  There's no way to know what yours is, they won't tell you.  CSRs don't even know.

I'd say PC that graduated secured card into a no AF QS.  Then apply for a new account of your choice, and combine it into the old account just to get maximum aging, but the new closed account will also age 10 more years.

Not sure how quickly you can combine after opening, someone with more experience can talk about that.  I do know people that apply for a new Capital One card every 6 months like clockwork, and they have done many, many combinations to get crazy credit limits.  One of my work friends has  $40,000 Capital One card (I think it's a Venture now, but can't recall) and it started out as a $300 HSBC card years ago.  Still has the original aging, even, but now whenever he applies for a new card, he gets $10,000+ credit limits instantly.  And he's used that $40,000 card as a prybar to get other $20,000+ starting limits with other banks.