svpii is right on the ball. A couple other things of note:

• All hard credit inquiries remain on your credit report for 7-10 years, depending on the credit bureau.
• FICO score calculation typically looks at the number of credit inquiries only in the prior six months.

What this means is that a potential creditor that uses FICO score and not much else will not mind if you switched credit cards and/or cancelled and reapplied a few times in the last several months, however a potential creditor that manually reviews your credit history -- i.e. mortgage lender -- may be concerned.

A person shopping around too much can suggest that the person is more credit hungry than what should otherwise be suggested from the person's income, payment behavior, and other financial data. This can cause some red flags to be raised. The mortgage lender may also conclude that the person will jump at the lowest rate too quickly, and would therefore charge more points to get some upfront revenue. Potentially, those extra 5000 FF miles on some airline can cost thousands of dollars in interest charges or points.

Because credit evaluation uses so many relative variables, what is greatly detrimental to one person's credit may not be substantial to a different person.


But, I'm not shocked by the results of the poll because of the general 1:1 relationship between credit issuer and airline -- and were more or less with the same airline for several years.

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On the road, In the air,
I enjoy travel, From here to there.