Order of Apps (Barclays & US Bank)
 

I am planning on doing another round of apps soon and wanted to get some feedback on prioritizing the order in which I apply.

My last round was on 1/21. This time I am interested in getting the Arrival and US Air (2nd) from Barclays and the Club Carlson from US Bank.

The only previous Barclays card I have had was another US Air, which I applied for on 6/26/2012.

I have read that Barclays allows multiple apps if you have prior business with them (in my case the US Air card which I havent used since the month after I got it) and that the pulls will eventually merge into one. It also seems that apps for the 35K US Air card result in an error message, but are eventually approved when you use their status checker. I'm not sure whether that would have any bearing on additional Barclays apps this round.

I have also read that US Bank doesnt like if you've had any recent inquiries.

With that in mind, what order would you suggest I apply? My personal priority is 1) US Air, 2) Arrival, 3) Club Carlson, but I think I may need to reverse that order to appease the banks.

Experiences with Barclays are all over the map. I had a card of theirs, got the Frontier for a trip to Alaska - approved 10.5K credit. Tried for another card the same day - denied, wouldn't move credit around, they told me to try again in a few months.

Nothing is consistent with Barclays except inconsistency (like my golf game). I was a first time Bclays customer back in early Feb and was approved for the NFL and US Air cards on the same day.

I have an AOR coming up early June and will be doing 1) US Bank Club C 2) Barclays Arrival 3) then the rest of Chase/Citi/Amex cards to try and minimize the likelihood of recent inquiries and other nonsense they may spew.

I would prioritize which cards you really want and apply for those first. If not auto approved, I'd skip the reconsideration call with Barclay's to avoid the multiple hard pulls they seem to like.

The 75K Amex Biz card forced a change in my plans. I ended up applying for that card first and got an instant approval. I then went for the Barclays Arrival and US Air in quick succession, but received a pending message for both.

Should I try Barclays recon or wait it out? I've read reports of Barclays pulling all three bureaus on recon calls, which I would obviously like to avoid. I think I should be able to get the Arrival, but would not be surprised to miss out on the US Air since I already have one open (10+ months old) on which I have barely put any spend.

I ended up calling recon, but was denied. I was told it was because I had 7 new cards (not just from Barclays) in the last 12 months and they wanted to see more history with those accounts. Hopefully there are no extra pulls because I called on the same day. Moving on...

But you haven't explained how deep your credit history overall is. 7 new cards in the last 12 months for someone who only has a credit history for the last couple years is completely different than 7 new cards in the last 12 months for someone who has a great credit history going back multiple decades (including one or more cards held that long).

I think I must be on the Barclays -black- list as I just got denied for the Arrival card. I have had the US air card 2 times and hold one now, also had the NFL card 6 months back and got shot down on a second nfl card shortly after I closed the first (risky move I know) Seems like they are doing a better job of weeding out us churners lately.

True that. Still, thanks aresay for providing the details you did - that they told you they didn't like seeing 7 cards in the past 12 months. This is still useful info. It shows that they're looking back a full 12 months, which is a little surprising to me - most reports I've seen here mention "too many cards recently" but your report is much more specific.

One thing I've been wondering: will a denied Barclays application cause further damage (in their eyes)?

I have 2 Barclay cards right now. My last Barclay card (and my most recent card of any kind) was in April 2013. I have a previous Barclay card from December 2012. I'm shooting for a third, but am planning to wait until June, 90+ days after the last application. I've opened 6 cards in the past 6 months (2 Barclay, 2 Amex, 1 Chase, 1 Citi). I *do* have a long, excellent credit history (though only 6 months of history with Barclays), including a couple of Chase cards I've had open for 10 years.

I want the next Barclay application (coming next month) to be successful. If it's not, I'm hoping that it wouldn't be a further setback that would make it harder to get another Barclay card a short while after.

It's a no-brainer: Apply for and wait for approval or reconsideration on a US Bank application before applying for Barclays. As another poster said, Barclays is all over the map. May be easy, may be impossible. US Bank, unless you have very few hard pulls and cc apps, is just difficult.

One thing I've been wondering: will a denied Barclays application cause further damage (in their eyes)?

On the third try, finally got the US card last month after calling their credit dept. CSR told me that I had been auto denied because of previous app in Feb.(denied)

This CSR looked at everything I've done with cc's in the last 12 and asked a lot of specific questions.

I think you are probably correct. My credit history goes back a little over ten years (always paid in full on time) but I didn't really start applying for multiple cards until just over a year ago, thus my average age of accounts is probably pretty low. Before then, I just had the card I opened about ten years ago, in addition to being an authorized user on some of my family members' cards. I thought having good credit (around 800 estimate on both Credit Karma & Sesame) would be enough, but I guess it wasn't.