The essence of the Citi 2 browser trick

Hey All,

I've done the trick myself in the past- 2 AA cards, side by side, with miliseconds between submit clicks- but with the new Citi Hilton Reserve catching my eye I was wondering if we were getting too mumbo jumbo about this.

Is the trick that if you submit 2 very similar apps within seconds you get one pull, or is it that you can apply for multiple cards from citi on the same day providing you clear cookies? And furthermore, does it have to be limited to the personal/business version of the same card (or the Amex/Visa) rather than:

I am ready to AOR, like the Reserve card and apply for TYP Preferred too using 2 browsers or just clearing cache and doing them one after another?

If 2 is fine what about 3? or 8?

First, business cards are on a different calendar. I won't discuss them further, because it just complicates stuff.

There are diffrerent limits that Citi has: One is two personal credit cards apps every 60ish days (but count 65 days to be safe, because they don't count to 60 correctly!). So no 3 or more possible.

Second, and independet of the first is: No Citi AA personal card for you if you applied for another Citi AA persaonl card less than 12 to 20 months ago. But the loophole is: If you apply for two of them "at the same time", neither sees the other app as having been within the past 12 months. But wait too long (a full day is definiltey too long, not sure where the cutoff is exactly), and the second app counts the first app as within the past 12 months and thus the second app is declined for "you already applied for another Citi AA card".

(If and when you cancelled is irrelevant. What matters is when you applied.)

The third limit is: No more than X inquiries on your account in the past N months. X and N may vary from one person to the next and from one instance to the next, though.

The fourth limit is: No more than Y total Citi cards. That varies by individual tho (and may also vary from year to year).

The fifth limit is: No more than ZZZZZ total credit limit for you. Again it varies. Sometimes this can be worked around by moving around credit limit during a call to check on the status of the card application, sometimes not.

With the regular HHonors card, there is no card-specific limits. So there's only the general Citi credit department limits. Many people have gotten two 50k offer Citi Hilton Visa cards at the same time by doing the exact same app twice (typically in two diffeent browsers).

And, yes, two different browsers types (eg, one Firefox, one IE) are to work around cookies "getting crossed". If you really understand which cookies to delete (or don't mind deleting every single one of your cookies), you may be able to it in the same browser, but it may be tricky especially with Hilton where the two apps are completely identical. You don't want to have a cookie the app page sets in the middle of you doing one app screw up the other app!

Completely unrelated browsers (like Firefox vs IE) don't share cookies at all. (Beware using just two different Mozilla browsers; two different Mozilla browsers, even though they go different names, might share cookies. Moziilla browsers include Firefox, SeaMonkey, Netscape, etc.)

Thanks for this complete explanation sdsearch. ^

And you don't need to do apps within milliseconds. I've waited even 1 minute between apps. Be safe by clearing all cache/cookies before and after submitting the first app. Then do the second app.

Data is stored by cookies or 'session' and I believe citi uses cookies. I believe a session also requires a restart of the browser.

i thought it would only work if Citi had the same card in Visa and Amex form. So for this new hilton card, I would think the 2 browser trick would not work since its only Visa.

The two browser trick works for 2 Hilton Honors Visas, or two Citi Thankyou Premier Visas. The different form is not necessary, just makes the two cards easier to tell apart.

It works. I just did it, as did both of my parents. You just use the same link in 2 different browsers.

And it also works for two AA Visa cards or two AA Amex cards. We know that, because some people in this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...ey-appear.html

got that to happen by accident (because of a techincal issue in their apps), and they ended up getting two Visa cards and getting the bonus on both and/or getting two Amex cards and getting the bonus on both.

This question keeps coming up more than once a week (in different threads)!!!

Banks don't know how you personally plan to use the cards, and some people legitimately want two cards of the same type to use for different types of expenses they want to keep separate (but, say, they want both to be Visa because of Amex's lower acceptance). So banks assume you may have a legitimate reason for wanting two cards.

Ugh!!! Just apped for the Thank You Premier and got the 7 day message...thinking I better not submit the second app...recomendations? I already called the app line and they just said it is still processing...

Will the 2 browser trick work if you don't get approved and need to call for recon? Will the recon rep know that you've applied for 2 cards?

I've never heard of a problem caused by calling them and talking to one rep about both cards (one at time, but that's just to not confuse them).

But people tend to wait a business day or two from the application day, to allow the system to have time to have done the partial processing already, before calling, just in case it might cause a problem if calling "too early".

People get all sorts of messages, and it doesn't seem to affect anything about the second app.

What is the second app for? Do either of these offers have a "first-time only" language? Or is the second card of the same type (Thank You Premier) as the first card? If neither of those, there's no big need to apply two-at-a-time. The general Citi credit limit rule is no more than two card apps (successful or not) every 65ish days. But that doesn't mean they have to both be at the same time. One (non-AA) card app every 35ish days is the same to Citi as two cards apps at the same time every 65ish days. They only care that you wait 65ish days from the first card before you apply for the third card; they don't care in general when you apply for the second card.

The cases where they might care is where the two cards are the exact same type, and yet you still want two of them. And then the other case is AA, which has its own special rules (on top of the general rule above).

Did you reach Step 5 on your application? Step 5 is where you can customize your card (should your card is approved.)

If your application stopped at Step 3, then the chance of being approved diminished, but not necessarily a denial, unless it is AAdvantage personal cards (due to the first timer clause, that often stopped the app at Step 3.)

Stopped at step 3...I checked with them today and they said it is still processing and is on the "final" processing step...whatever that is. I did notice that they pulled TU and then the next day pulled EQ. Not sure why they pulled both...any idea if this is good or bad at this point? Regardless I held off on the second app...my idea was to get two cards with one pull...guess that is out of the window now!!

This is not the total inquiries one has, right?

Does anyone have more information on this? Thanks.