Lowering your credit limits with other banks would increase your credit utilization (unless it's zero, which is not good either) and that could negatively impact your Chase approval via human and (possible) automatic too.
Not true according to Real Life experiences.
My utilization would still be <5% though. So I am not too worried about that.
You have nothing to worry about.
Originally Posted by
NYCRuss
Your FICO scores will still drop. You're also likely to get smaller limits as you are now demonstrating an ability to responsibly handle credit at a reduced level.
Not true according to Real Life experiences.
Originally Posted by
Brugge
Not true. We have been doing this with every bank for over a year. Before we lowered our CLs, we were getting CLs of $5K to $8K with Citi and Chase, and typically had to call Recon to get approved.
We now get instant approvals in the $18K to $23K range with Citi and Chase. And Citi lists my EXP CR as 830, despite my @15 apps per year.
Yup, before lowering CLs we had the similar experiences as you.
Then we started to lower the excessive CLs on existing cards to make rooms for new cards which then came in as instant approvals with much larger credit lines.
For the past 8 or 9 Citi cards, husband has received instant approval of an identical 15K CL. We lower the credit lines to 10K at activation because all it needs to see is $1K spend for the most part as we are not chasing Exec cards. Once spend is met, bonus posted, we further lower it to 5K, later to 2K in preparation to X it in coming months. They are gone between 3 to 6 months. However we plan to keep at least one, may be two cards at 15K for product conversion when time comes.
We do not apply as many cards with Chase as they cannot be repeated as quickly as Citi (zombie links). Also the pool of cards we are interested in, is quite small. For example, many here the Southwest cards have high appeal due to the CP. We do not do domestic travel, never fly WN in the past and probably would not either in the future. We just got one Hyatt card because we prefer points over certs but we might be able to use it next Spring so we decide to finally get it when it has an enhanced offer not seen before. So it takes out at least several cards from the Chase pool, further limited our Chase apps which generally are 3 to 4 a year.
Starting in late 2013 we stopped hoarding Chase CLs at card cancellations. We then noticed the rate of instant approvals went up. Husband has gotten 5 instant approvals straight. In contrast, I still have too many Chase cards so my total credit lines are still at the 60K+ zone which means for each card applied I had to call recon - the only time I did not call yet the card was approved on the next day was an Ink Plus last Spring. Read about people being grilled in length I decided not to call business recon when doing a double app of a personal Marriott and the Ink Plus. Besides I was out of the country at that time. I only dealt with the Marriott recon. Once again the nice lady told me the SOLE reason my app was not instantly approved was because my total credit line was over 60K (at almost 63K). Chase actually took 5K from my 20K Freedom to give to Ink Plus and made Ink Plus a 10K CL card. So instead of maintaining the same line, I wound up getting another 5K. I eventually lowered the CL on IHG to get rid of the excess because IHG only saw a few hundreds a year but had 12K line.
Of course when I applied the UA personal on 06/02, I had to call - Rep told me Yup, you had to reallocate credit line - whether moved or swapped out a card, it did not matter, did whatever you wanted. He was curt but accommodating. At first I thought this would be a good way to cancel the Marriott card that has run its course but then changed my mind as I wanted another 5K retention offer from it.
So I took 5K from Freedom to open the UA personal. Now Freedom is down to 10K.
Husband on the other hand, got his Hyatt card instantly approved with 11K line a week later. His total line is approaching 45K and we will trim down the Hyatt 3 or 4 months later as we intend to earn the certs in the 2nd or 3rd month for intended usage in late June / early July 2016.
I have been told by at least 3 Chase recon reps on the threshold of 60K. Of course there would always be some folks have high 6 figures stated income, and the 60K would not apply.
In coming months I will "lose" about 20K when 3 cards will go. Hopefully by then the Chase policy would be a bit more lenient - I am already eligible again for a CSP bonus (but chose UA personal instead), as well as another BA very soon. We will see.
Frankly, some of the credit lines doled out are ridiculous. For all the intent and purposes, most of us here only need a line good enough to easily meet the spend requirement.
Originally Posted by
NYCRuss
That's a specific situation with limits from the same bank as the card application. Lowering limits with Citi won't help with Chase approvals. It might help with Citi approvals, but not with Chase approvals.
Unless you've controlled the CLDs, and it doesn't sound like you have, you can't establish utility in CLDs with other institutions.
The credit analysts that I've read on this subject back it up.
We probably are the only people here that do NOT care for FICO, never subscribe any credit monitoring service, nor know what our FICOs are. Good thing now some banks actually provide it to you even you are not getting a worse offer (mostly the APR I assume). BofA is one of such. OTOH, neither Chase nor Citi would provide such info unless you are getting a worse offer. Since we never see such info from them, we blissfully assume our FICOs are good enough for what we do.
Whatever academic studies or analysis or whatever, are meaningless to me who despite the former life has a lot to do with the related fields, now only cares for the EMPIRICAL DATA - Because what matters the most, is the RESULTS. We do not have any clue how banks' risk assessment models work - i dont think anyone posts here, bankers or not, would know the intrigue details either. All we can go by is What works and what not and that also seems to be bank-specific - so we go along in order to achieve the desired outcome - Isn't that is the most important thing?
