Back in the golden days of CC churning, 0% financing and high-yield savings accounts, I was making a decent five figure income using a strategy of selectively freezing Experian, and bumping inquiries off my Equifax and Transunion reports to get approvals .. at one point I had over $1M in balances @ 0% balance-transfer interest earning about 4-5% .. much much more lucrative than the points and miles game we play today.

Nevertheless, the strategy still applies. In the last year and a half since I got into "CC churning for miles" I've accumulated close to 3M miles (wife + me) and today have 0 (zero) inquiries on Transunion and Equifax.

Chase pulls Equifax exclusively for us so had it not been for bumpage, I would have over 10 inquiries on EQ

TU is used by Barclays and sometimes by BOA .. but instead of half a dozen or so inquiries on TU, I have zero (0)

Amex/Citi and sometimes BOA pull Experian ... I have over 20 inquires on EX, but to get over denials for too many inquires, I have frozen EX and forced the banks to pull my pristine EQ and/or TU reports (all three scores are in 780-790 range)

Freezing Experian has not worked with Amex as they do not pull any other bureau report for us unfortunately .. but this approach works with all other banks

I'm surprised there is little discussion of this topic on FT .. especially given the fact that all the best offers are from Chase who seem to pull Equifax for many of us.

I'm not going to get into the details of "bumpage" but I will point interested people to the "credit boards" forums as there is very extensive discussion of the topic there. You will have to invest a little time and money, but for less than $100 you can have inquiry-free EQ and TU reports. Freezing Experian costs another $10.

please share your similar experiences.