I recently called Citi Bank and asked for a credit line increase. They put in my request and told me to check back in an hour. I did so, and sadly was denied. About a week later I checked and discovered they had done a hard pull on my credit report. They did not ask me, they did not inform me, they just did it.
The same day, I called Citi Bank/Dell Computer and asked them to increase my credit line. In retrospect, this was a very stupid action on my part because they just a few months ago increased it from $2k to $3k on their own. But I got excited with the idea that if I was just able to raise my credit limits then my debt ratio would reduce and thereby increase my scores.
Dell/Citi Bank DID ask for my authorization for a hard credit pull. I stupidly said okay. They also denied my credit line increase.
So then I find I have TWO Citi bank hard pulls on the same day, one clearly authorized and one not. I disputed the one not authorized, but it will probably come back verified. I will then follow up with a letter to Citi Bank telling them my experience and asking them to recode it to a soft pull.
In my enthusiam, I probably actually lowered my scores from all this. At least Sears graciously raised my limit from $500 to $750. And Capital One lowered an APR that day from around 28% to 14.9%, almost cutting it in half!!! So I did have some success that day. Now I am awaiting GW responses from 12 letters sent (for two of us). Trying to get above 720 as fast as possible...
