Originally Posted by
Richard Berg
I would never completely close out your relationship with a bank. Many of them (especially Barclays & BoA, from what I can tell) are much stricter about extending the 1st credit line than they are about a 2nd or 3rd.
Originally Posted by
roguehiker
Good point. I tried that to see if it could get me off the Plat spiral of death, and obviously it didn't work. Now that I have the Merrill, maybe I'll wait a few months, and then apply again for the Alaska Sig and see if that changes my luck...
And the simplest way to not close out your relationship with a bank is to have a no-AF "anchor" card with the bank, which you use just to always have one card open at that bank. In my case, it used to be a Choice card until BofA dropped hotels, and now it's just some generic BofA card. I don't care, I use it just enough to keep it alive (plus it has a really big BofA logo which works a bit better for Museums on Us than partner cards with tiny BofA logos).