@idunnomypassword1231 wrote: is requesting a CLI not a hard pull? I see this message right before i'm about to submit the CLI request: "By submitting this form you authorize Citibank, N.A. to obtain your credit report." thx Soft pull, although many of the other co-branded cards issued through Citi Retail Services do use hard pulls for CLI requests.  ... View more

BoA has a 3/12 rule for applicants that don't already have an open BoA CC or deposit account,   7/12 for existing clients.    You already have a couple of cards with at least $5K limits which is good, but be mindful that BoA is less about big starting limits and more about generous CLIs when cards are frequently used with balances promptly PIF.   The invitation to apply would have been based upon your credit profile from 2-3 months ago,  the bigger the change in your current status from what it was 3 months ago the more impactful it can be to your odds of approval. ... View more

YMMV but don't be surprised if your FICO scores drop by somewhere around 20-30 points as you won't have an open installment loan reporting.    Up to you as to whether or not you get a new share secured loan or not.  Emperically if you're left with FICO scores at least in the 760-780 range once the loan reports as closed and your scores are recalculated the positive impact from having an open installment loan with less than 9% utilization reporting is more about positive reinforcement of ones accomplishments than it is about improving odds of approval or better terms offered upon approval.   ... View more

An 680-690 Experian FICO 8 score is high enough to get you considered for an approval.  Do you have any open deposit accounts of your own with BoA? Out of the applications you made over the last 12 months that led to the 9 inquiries how many of them led to card approvals? Aew any of your other current open cards (ignore AU accounts)  bank cards(MC/Visa/AMEX/Discover) with a $5K+ credit limit reporting?  Has the utilization on your cards (ignore the AU impact) been fairly consistent recently or did it take a big jump in the last 2-3 months?   ... View more

  AMEX hasn't updated the welcome offer terms for the Business Gold card with the same restrictions now in place across multiple other card families, like for example their family of personal charge cards, where having earned a welcome offer on a higher tier card in the family makes you ineligible to earn one on the lower tier cards in that family.    Your having already earned a welcome bonus on your Business Platinum shouldn't have disqualified you from a welcome offer on your Business Gold.    Did you have popups blocked on your browser either via a native setting or a feature of an installed extension?            ... View more

"No interest if paid in full within 18 months on each eligible purchase of $549 or more or no interest if paid in full within 6 months..."  Fine print also states that minimum payments are required and the way the fine print reads that interest does accrue but is waived if the entire amount of the purchase is paid off in time. ... View more

Snail mail offer came today,  6 month 0% APR on qualifying purchases $199-$548.99 or 18 month 0% APR on purchases $549+ from time of activation through 12/31/25,  offer to be activated by July 4th.      Brief synopsis of non-qualifying purchases are pretty much anything related to any of the Sears/SYW/Kmart companies except Sears Home and Business franchises, BTs, cash advances and credit insurance payments.  It also claims that the offer 'may not be combined with any other credit promotion offer' (wah).    ... View more

Not much you can do about the derogs beyond letting them age out and making sure you don't get another one.   What you can work on is the fact that you've got 3 cards reporting at 89%+ utilization and another at 69%+.    You've also got more than half your cards reporting a balance but the negative impact that in itself would have on your scores is a lot less than the cards with high utilization.  If you can't get to the point where all accounts are reporting such that you reach AZEO where the O is less than 9% utilization before you actually apply for your mortgage you should probably at least work toward something like getting the utilization reporting on each of these individual accounts as best you can below the 89/69/49/29% thresholds i.e. 1st milestone is to get all below 89%, next milestone is  all below 69%, etc. until you get as close as you can to AZEO before you start applying for your mortgage.  As your utilization drops (and your derogs age) your scores should start going up.       This isn't an exact science so you may get different opinions on the specifics, but at a 100,000 foot view this is the kind of strategy you should be thinking about IMO.  ... View more

I went down this exact path with them several years ago although I didn't have derogs,  just a split of a clean/thick file.   I'm assuming you have been calling them and been speaking with offshore staff.    By design they are limited in what they can see and even more limited by what they can do.    There are a few things I suggest you do if you haven't done each of them already.  Don't expect this to be a quick process,  closer to 2-3 months.   Briefly put:   Get a fresh copy of your EX,  TU, and EQ reports, if you haven't already, from annualcreditreport.com.  If you can't get one from a CRA that way request one from that CRA in writing via USPS.     At this point moving forward,  whenever you make a phone call keep written notes on time/date, who you spoke to if possible, with briet notes about what was discussed and said.   Pick a couple of the creditors that are reporting on EX and TU but not on your 'official' EQ report that you know should be reporting  to EQ; contact them and ask them to confirm that they are in fact reporting to Equifax.    Contact Equifax again, explaining that you believe you have a split file, you have information missing from your Equifax report that is being reported by EX and TU, and that you have confirmed with <name creditors> that they are in fact reporting to Equifax.   The CSR you speak with may or may not be able to see that you have a split file,  but they should be opening an internal ticket for US staff to research.    Don't have any expectations whatsoever that you will be successful in getting a live transfer to US staff, although it sometimes can happen (you can ask for a transfer), but you may get a callback from US staff as part of the investigation process.  Get the ticket # they open.    You can also ask to speak to a supervisor as well, but expect to be told they're busy and will call you back, and don't be surprised if you don't get a callback.    I want to emphasize that IME the remote callcenter staff is quite good, but they're deliberately hamstrung in what they can see and especially what they can do themselves to address a problem.  Even if they can see the exact issue they often can't address it themselves because they don't have the necessary access to make the change, they have to create a ticket.    Don't be afraid to call back weekly to get status on that ticket #,   it can take EQa month to complete an investigation.    Ultimately be prepared to file an online complaint with the CFPB against Equifax,  which is why I'm suggesting you follow each of these steps.  Basically you want to set the table and be able to show that you've done due diligence to confirm there's an issue (confirmation of info being reported by EX and TU but not be EQ where multiple creditors confirm they are in fact reporting to EQ) and you followed EQ's complaint/escalation process to try to resolve the problem yet it still remains.    The one thing I can't speak to is how effective the CFPB is right now given the recent turmoil involving them the last several months.    If they make changes and screw THAT up rinse and repeat,  don't give up.    I can also speak to having to do that.      ... View more

Makes me wonder if you actually talked to an analyst especially if they weren't in Florida.  I don't blame you for deciding to pass.  ... View more

@AzCreditGuy wrote:   I may just call up the underwriter and ask if they can see what I might quailify for? Or what does the group think? I dont want another HP on my Ex unless its a high SCL     What's the worst they can do if you call beyond telling you that there's no point in having a discussion if your reports remain locked/frozen? If it were me I'd call.    I occasionally see data points to the contrary but in general BoA's reputation is that they won't make a credit decision if they can't see a report, even if it only calls for a soft pull.    Just dawned on me to ask...any issue with their 7/12 rule?   Whilen not immutable it's something they take seriously and you only mentioned going 5 months back.      ... View more

Congrats on the approvals!   I'm going to spitball that the 1/8 rule didn't apply here because while the Costco card is issued through Citi.com the BestBuy card is issued through and managed by the Citi Retail Services business unit.  ... View more

@TyrannicalDuncery3 wrote: Thanks @coldfusion ! Have you ever tried P/Cs between "levels" of a payment network, e.g. Visa Signature vs. Infinite? Not with BoA (i.e. haven't done a Premium Rewards-> Premium Rewards Elite PC) but I have with Chase with CSP-> CSR and when they converted all UA Club cards from Visa Signature to Visa Infinite.   Expiry date and CVV changed but in both cases the 16 digit account # remained unchanged.  ... View more

@EasyMark wrote: I logged on late tonight to my wife's SYW Mastercard website (she has a regular SYW credit card, not the Sears Card, TYP variant), and a big banner at the top had the following statement: "REMINDER: ACCOUNT CLOSURE Your Sears Home Improvement AccountSM credit card will be closed on 7/10/2025, as the Citibank, N.A. program for the Sears Home Improvement AccountSM credit card will be ending. You can continue to use your account, as long as your account remains in good standing, until 7/09/2025, then your account will be closed."   Has anybody else seen this? What do you make about this? Is this just another mistake on their behalf?   My guess is that they either screwed up when generating the mailing list of people who still held the version of the Sears store card tied to the home services business unit (the group that handled in-house appliance repairs and appliance parts) and mistakenly included some SYW cardholders, or something like at some point she created an online account on the Sears Home Services website and used her SYW card to pay for an in-house appliance repair.   Best bet might be for her to call in and ask why she got the email.    ... View more

BoA almost always pulls EX for CC and auto loan applications and soft pulls from TU for CC CLI requests but they did hard pull from EQ for my last card.  ... View more

If you wanted to go full mamabear on them you could try emailing the Illinois Division of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) at FPR.CreditUnion@illinois.gov or calling them at 217-782-2831 and tell them you want to file a complaint.      ... View more

Latest offer:   "Earn 11,500 Bonus ThankYou Points when you make eligible online purchases totalling $750 or more with your Citi ThankYou Mastercard from 6/15/25 (or the date you activate this offer, whichever is later) through 7/14/25 for this offer. "   Usual disclaimers made about purchases from before activation and which categories like utilities and services not being eligible for the promotion.    Good timing, I had an eligible spend planned but I can wait a few days.  ... View more

That's an invitation to apply, not a preapproval.       Their preapprovals are made as a type of Special Offer found in your Activity Center when logged in online, but not all special offers are actual preapprovals and having a preapproval doesn't exempt you from taking a hard pull (or guarantee an approval).   The one I got several years ago was basically a "you're preapproved for one of these 3 cards, pick one".    The 25,000 point SUB is the standard offer for the Travel Rewards card.      ... View more

Mentioning as an aside that the Thank You Mastercard that replaces my Sears TYP card arrived today.  Account number did not change. ... View more

The traditional recommendation before Chase adopted policies specifically intended to make it difficult to churn their cards was to make sure that their exposure was no more than [(50% of your yearly gross income) - $10K] before applying for an additional card, but that assumed that the applicant's yearly gross income was more in at least the $80-120K range.   I've heard of cardholders whose yearly gross was close to yours ultimately getting a TCL across all their Chase cards of closer to 60% of yearly gross income.   If you're denied you can always recon and as a last resort offer to have some CL reallocated from one of your current cards in order to support an approval of your additional card,  which is something they sometimes will do when the donor card is a personal card.  If it were me I wouldn't bother with a $1.5K CLD request. ... View more

I'd suggest you just leave things be,  beyond making sure that you have and keep on hand evidence that a) your bff is currently your roommate,  and b) that your bff is either a current member or is eligible for membership.   NFCU does sometimes circle back and later ask that you provide positive evidence that you qualify for membership - if they do that they freeze your accounts and if you fail to show that you qualified they aren't afraid to ultimately revoke your membership - but the overall odds of you being asked to prove you qualifed for membership are actually quite low.   ... View more

The migration from California to Denver was already in full swing by the late '90s.  Even back then it was a running joke that it was easy to pick out the expats from all the cars and SUVs that ended up in a ditch after each snowstorm.   The 2 most lasting of my many memories of Denver are from the bartender that tried to use Coors Lite to make me a Black & Tan (uhhhh....no) and witnessing the mayhem up close in and around LoDo when the Broncos won Super Bowl XXXIII. ... View more

I poked around on the website for giggles and grins,  and while my CSR would be available as a donor card based upon the max amount of transferable limit each of my other cards is showing (would leave the CSR with exactly $10K) the CSR is not listed as a potential recipient for a limit transfer. ... View more

BoA mail invites are invitations to apply.    They only extend actual preapprovals as a type of Special Offer in the online Activity Center, but not all special offers are preapprovals.   BoA does sometimes silently transfer on their own some limit from an existing card in order to approve a new one.  If you get a denial you can try calling and asking for them to reconsider by transferring some limit from your existing card but you will need to grill the person you speak to to confirm they're an analyst performing a manual review (possibly someone in Jacksonville FL) as sometimes you can end up talking to a service rep not empowered to make a credit decision who just submits another automated application in your behalf.  If you apply and get approved log in and check the limit on your exsting card.   Can't really speak to the USB business card, I'd expect you might get better feedback on that one in the Business Credit subforum.   ... View more

Hasn't been a problem for me so far with PCs as the payment network has been the same for the old and new cards but there will definitely be a change if the payment network changes as part of the product change i.e. Visa -> Mastercard or Mastercard -> Visa,  as the 1st digit of the card # indicates which payment network the card uses (Mastercard == 5,  Visa == 4). ... View more

@bs1234 wrote: @AndySoCal wrote: @bs1234 @Why do you think banks keep doing Credit limit decreases on cards that are not used or rarely used. Ummm, because while the bank has have to have some type of reserve against the credit limit, the lack of use means the bank is not making as much profit as if they do a CLD and give more credit to a more active user? That was the main catalyst for Synchrony targeting a wide swath of cardholders with strong credit profiles and high 5-figure aggregate limits on Synchrony cards coupled with minimal usage for closure of all their Synchrony cards a few years ago.  Due to the rising amount of defaults Synchony was mandated to either increase their loss reserves or reduce their overall exposure and they chose the latter option by closing these underutilized accounts. ... View more

@loganbabb wrote:   I currently only have an auto loan through Ally which I just hit 2 years, and I've never had anything else. I'm trying to build my credit so that by next year I can use my VA home loan. My current FICO 8 scores according to Experian are as follows: Experian: 744 Equifax: 719 TransUnion: 733 Amount of new credit - Exceptional Length of credit history - Fair Amount of debt - Fair Payment History - Very Good My questions: I'm planning on getting my first credit card with Navy Federal and I'm thinking of choosing the Cash Rewards Secured card and using it below 10% utilization to build credit, but I'm also thinking of opening the Pledge Loan and doing the "hack". I'm wanting to build my credit fast while also building my history. I don't miss payments and I do auto pay. Like I mentioned I'm planning on using my VA Home Loan by next year and I'm trying to figure out the best route, and the causes and effects from one or both of these options. A NFCU Pledge Loan or other similar SSL (Shared Security Loan) from a different CU with the 9% utilization technique really only has the opportuity to have maximum positive impact on one's FICO scores when it is the only installment loan.   Aggregate utilization across all open installment loans counts in establishing the impact, and the size of your auto loan (and your mortgage if approved) is almost certainly a lot larger than what most people would be willing to open up a SSL for.   If you have 2 years of solid payment history against that auto loan and nothing derogatory on your credit reports i.e. you have a thin but clean credit profile ou may not need to go down the secured card route with NFCU, assuming you qualify for membership. If it were me I'd seriously consider just applying for the normal Cash Rewards card. ... View more

Thank you everyone! - CF ... View more

Yes to using the cards and paying them off in full every month.     She should not be applying for more subprime cards of the Credit One/Merrick/Mission Lane/Indigo/anything issued by Bank of Missouri genre,  at this point she probably should avoid secured cards as well.   She isn't rebuilding credit after a bankruptcy or other catastrophic financial situation like significant medical debt, she's just new to the credit game in the US.      Spend the next 6 months researching potential good fits for her next card before she applies again.    If she wants to get into the Chase ecosystem wait a year, they're OK with pretty thin files but prefer applicants whose credit history is at least a year old.   As a rule of thumb IMO she should avoid store cards for now as well, off the top of my head about the only exception to that rule would be a Target store card but if she's a frequent shopper she could just get a debit card from them and tie it to your checking account to still get the 5% discount.         ... View more

@mgood wrote: @LivingTheAmericanDream wrote: This is one of the best BT deals out there:  1.99% for 12 mos, no addl. fees. Move over the higher interest cards :) I'm planning to take advantage of some of that. I would have done it yesterday, the opportunity was presented. But I didn't know, and couldn't quickly find, if there was a balance transfer fee. Knowing now that there is none, I'll hit that when the card arrives.   @Guyatthebeach wrote:    . . . Also if you don't care about the sign up bonus for the Flagship, you can product change the cash+ rewards to the Flagship. I'd wait to go that route until you got credit for the cash rewards sub. That's something I've been contemplating today. If I get the Flaship, it gets 2% back just like the cashRewards Plus, so I won't need this card any longer. So I could just PC to the Flagship later and not have another inquiry or new account on the record. On the other hand, the Flagship has a nice SUB, so I could get that, then maybe cancel the cashRewards Plus or maybe PC it to something else. I don't know if they'll combine CL or not, like if I have two $25k cards, can I combine that into one $50k card and close the other? There are things I don't know about NFCU that I need to find out. As  a rule they no longer combine limits or otherwise allow credit limit to be shifted between cards but at least until fairly recently they would consider shifting some limit on a case-by-case basis between existing cards if it were needed to facilitate a balance transfer.   Part of the rationale for the blanket recommendation to not apply for the Flagship as one's 1st card is the multiple data points over time that support the belief that NFCU tends to give a more generous starting limit with one's 1st card than additional ones, combined with the Flagship's $5K minimum SL.  Note:  I'm a data point that demonstrated this isn't always the case.   A few other things you'll want to keep in mind: - Maximum CL on the Flagship is $80K, on the Cash/More'/Go Rewards cards it is $50K. - You can have up to 3 open cards, maximum conbined CL across all cards is $80K.  They occasionally screw up a CLI such that you have a combined CL over $80K with the but when they catch their mistake (usually within 1-2 days) they claw back enough of the CLI to reset the combined  CL down to $80K. - The 1 CLI per 6 month rule is tracked for each card individually, getting a CLI on a card tomorrow doesn't mean you have to wait 6 months to be eligible to request a CLI on any card of theirs you hold. - $8K is the maximum amount they will approve for a CLI request.   Congrats on the approval, that's a top tier SL for one's 1st card from them. ... View more