Hello everyone,

I am posting to describe the situation I have just experienced, and hopefully it can help someone.

In July of 2013 I did my first round of applications for credit cards. I picked the Chase Marriott, Citi Hilton (no fee one), and the American Express HHonors (also no fee one). I chose those based on getting some hotel points and I liked the no fees on the two Citi cards for my first go.

These were not my first credit cards, but my first round of applications since learning about the points game. CreditKarma has me at about 765 and CreditSesame has me at about 800 right now -- of course these are not official scores though.

I applied a couple of weeks ago for the Southwest Premier Personal and Business. I was approved for the business card, but declined for the personal one. I called the reconsideration line, and was informed that the specialist to whom I was speaking could not approve a new card because of my exposure and that she would have to elevate it to a senior specialist. After ending the call I was thinking about it and realized she was talking about my total credit limit with Chase (Which is now $25,200 between my two Chase cards -- the Marriott and the Southwest Business card).

I decided to call back and see if I could have them reduce the limit of one or both of my current Chase cards to make room for the card instead of them elevating to try and add more total limit. The specialist said he would see what he could do. When he came back, he informed me that he would be unable to approve me for the personal card because of the number of new credit cards I applied for in the past six months. He mentioned the two new cards from Chase that I have, one from American Express, and one from Citi.

Unfortunately there was nothing more I could do at this time and I thanked him for his time. They wanted to see more usage and time on those new accounts.

Once I got off the phone, I thought about it a little and remembered reading about trying to diversify to which agencies your hard pulls were going. Unfortunately I cannot remember where my pulls went for the Citi and Amex card, but if they did indeed go to Equifax (the agency noted in my decline letter), then I would have had 5 total pulls on Equifax in the last 6 months. Perhaps that is too much.

I was not cautious about which agencies my applications were using to obtain my data yet because I was only planning on doing maybe 6 - 8 applications in my first year or so of trying the points game so I didn't think it would matter. In any case, remember to think about which agencies your cards will check for your credit reports! I will pay more attention to this now -- failure to do so has cost me a hard credit pull with nothing to show for it.

I will try again for the Southwest Personal card maybe sometime between April and July -- whenever the 50,000 point offer is going in that time frame.

Any thoughts? Input?

Thanks for reading and I hope this helps someone to avoid thinking the way I did for my first year of applications :P