I think I'm better off closing the new Discover Card...

[PCR20]

I know the "Closing Card" rule/guidline, but I'm not convinced I should keep a new Discover card I just received.

I always receive Pre-Approved Discover Card junk mail and it went right to the shredder until two months ago.

With the prices of gas skyrocketing, their "5% Back on Gas" offer caught my eye, as did their "One Year 0% Interest, then 12.99% thereafter" offer.

I went ahead and sent in the application, thinking with my 30+ years of absolutely perfect credit performance and FICOs in the upper 760's, I'd get a good $10K+ card worth having.

A few days after I applied for the Discover card, Citi Bank contacted me with an offer of 0% for 14 months on my $14K CL card with $0 balance on it.

I have three Chase cards at about 14% Interest that I use for business travel and supplies that had a combined balance of about 8K, so I transferred all of them to the Citi at 0%.

Well, as luck would have it Discover must have pulled my report when all 4 of the cards showed balances.  

(actually, no luck was involved, I was just in a brain freeze and didn't think about the timing they would report to the CRAs )

What Discover sent me was not at all what they offered nor what I expected.

I got a $2,500 CL card at 23% Interest (although they did honor the 0% for one year)

My way of thinking is because the card has such a low CL and the Interest is so high, I have no use for it and actually its "newness" hurts my AAoA more than it helps the little bump on my overall Utilization.

I think I should just close the thing and let my AAoA be retained.

I have 8 other cards totaling about 60K of CL, so I don't need it at all, and besides now Chase is making the same exact offer for Cash Back on Gas for a card I already hold anyways.

Close it?

[PCR20]

Oh, I forgot to mention above that I checked today and this new Discover Card has not yet reported to any CRA. 

I'm not positive if its activated or not because I called the number on the card to inquire about why the card was so low a CL and such a high Interest Rate and got asked lots of questions and transferred all over the place before someone finally said to call back during regular bausiness hours.

That was two weeks ago and I have been away on business travel ever since.

[llecs]

Whether opened or closed, the impact on your AAoA and FICO for the new acct will be the same. I'd keep it open. They are also good with CLIs.

[AndySoCal]

I would agree and keep it open and wait  six months and call Discover and see if they can do a CLI as a soft pull. If it is a soft pull the inquiry will not hurt your score. From the sounds of it you apped for Disocver More. You may want to consider Discover Open Road  which offers 2% on gas and restraunts year round. The  Discover open road does not have the different type of 5% catagories.