Originally Posted by
silam
Why would you ever ask your limit to be lowered? When they deny you, you can call up and ask for the card to be opened and to move some of your limit from another card.
That way your limit never goes down. If you lower your limit they might decide not to allow you to raise it...
I use Citi MC Gold and Plat for AA mileage earning. Having done the citi MC churn a lot of times for AA miles, I learned the following truths:
1) call to lower your limit on card (1). The reason is because Citi gives each user an allowance of available credit. Say mine is $10k. That would mean if a card has a $9,000 limit on it--and they often do when you have had it a while, you could only get a new card (2) with $1,000 limit on it.
2) OK that may be fine but even as Citi MC lets you charge OVER your limit as long as you pay it back in 30 days along with your min payment (or in our cases, all of your bal) for that mount, you still would rather not really like your CC report to show that you always charge way over the limit. And while your history may be positive over all, it would. Sure, sometimes it would be ok to be over and have that show up--because after all, you always remain current, but not on EVERYTHING and not every month. And personally, I charge a lot more than $1,000. So, ask them to lower card (1) to say $5,000. Now card (2) can also have up to that amount.
3) By consolidating you carry over the existence and history of card (1) to (2) and therefore create a new account number that can generate a new 100,000 yearly mileage earning cap (at least for non-elite AA members who use the Citi MC for those mile earnings), and you avoid or rather prolong the annual fee out ever more months into the future. Your CC report takes no or less of any type of 'hit' and the only crux is to have to remember to change any bill pays and keep track of things you may return to a store, etc. And I would use these cards you churn for regular stuff in life between changes anyway. Anyone here who is JUST churning and not even really using the card too is screwing things up, I think.
4) I have found that if I call to do the lower limit thing AND the consolidate thing in one call, it takes a long time for the CSRs I have dealt with to do all this. But if I make two short calls it's actually been faster over all for me! So lower the limit on card (1) on day one and do the consolidate on day 2. Others may have had different experiences...
5) No 'system' or seemingly regular set of self-create automation and predictable approach should be used when doing all this. If you do the same things with limits, cards, dates and times, amounts or anything else, I find that banks and marketing people can and will find ways to black ball you. My solution to this is to change it up often. For example, with the CC limit lowering, choose $4,000 one time, $6,500 another instead of doing 5 and 5 every time you do it. For the consolidation, don't like time yourself to call every 2 months on the 15th... change the dates, wait an extra couple weeks, skip a churn and give back to the Gods, and stuff like that.
6) emailing may work but sometimes they make you call because security have discovered that people often divorce and cancel one anther's cards without real permission. Besides, emailing may not generate a reply with a named CSR and it may appear to ;generated' or automated to their liking.
7) check your CC report often, and if possible, do so with Citi's Identify Theft Monitor. If anything, doing more business with them makes you look good.
8) I forget what 8 was for
