It's on the lowest of the low end of U.S. Bank approvals, but it's an approval on a goal card!
I had been gardening since August in anticipation of some house hunting. Those plans are currently on the shelf, and it seemed like a good time to step out of the garden - especially since I needed to get a new business card a few weeks ago (my Citi Costco Visa DPs are here).
Later in the day after I got my Citi Costco Biz Visa approved, I decided to try for the BofA Customized Cash card, mainly for 3% back on online purchases (take that, PayPal Mastercard!). BofA gave me a denial message, although about a week after that I got a letter from BofA saying that they needed to confirm my Social Security number and income. I'm actually OK with doing that for the Customized Cash, so I'm preparing to send that info to them.
But about a week later, before I got the letter from BofA asking for more info, I decided to roll the dice one more time with a US Bank Cash+ card. I had been applying for cards like mad in 2022 and 2023. I was at 10/24, but I had slowed down in the last 12 months, leaving me at 2/12 and 0/6 for new cards. And in the last several months I had also been getting letters for the US Bank Platinum card (and invitations to apply from bank employees), which led me to believe that I might have a chance with them. I still wouldn't have applied with either US Bank or BofA if I hadn't been gardening for a while first.
After reading other DPs I was expecting them to run TU, where I show 0/12 and 6/24 for inquiries, and a FICO 8 score of 736. Instead, they ran Experian - by far the word of the 3 bureaus for me. With Experian, my inquiries were 14/24 (2 of those inquiries could probably be cancelled out for car shopping), 5/12 and 1/6 after my BofA application. My Experian FICO 8 was 715, where it remains.
After the longest 24-second wait of my entire week, I got the dreaded "Thanks for applying. You'll hear from us soon" message. Knowing that it would be manually reviewed, I did a quick Zelle transfer to get my US Bank checking past $500 (why didn't I do that earlier?) A few days later I called the reconsideration line to ask if they needed anything, and I got transferred to a nice operator who wanted me to confirm my online US Bank account. After I did that, she told me they were ready to manually review the account.
A few hours later, I log into my US Bank account, where I'm greeted with this screen:
It's for $500. You know what? I knew the risks when I applied, and I'm happy to take it. I like U.S. Bank, and I'll especially like keeping my checking account there free (my grandfathered Union Bank account will no longer be free soon without something like this to keep it free). I'll enjoy getting the $200 SUB, and 5% back on some of my purchases. I'm also confident that my CL will grow, and that this will help me get the Altitude Reserve at some point down the road. I would have loved more credit limit padding, but I'm happy with this approval.
Edit: I forgot to add these other personal account stats earlier. At the time I applied, my AAoA was 3 years 3 months, AoOA 10 years 6 months, 19 revolving accounts, 17% utilization.
Sorry to hear about the low starting limit, but I'm glad to see that you are keeping a positive outlook. Yes, the account should grow with CLIs and it should help pave the way to a better Altitude Reserve approval.
Congratulations on the Cash+ approval! Great card if you can utilize the categories, especially utilities.
Congrats.
