Amtrak Trick & My Upcoming Churn
 

You can purchase a refundable Amtrak ticket over $200 and cash it in after you transfer miles to CO.

I'm prepping my churn but I've done most of them the last year. My prospects:

75K Citi Biz- I opened a biz 4 months ago and closed it 45 days ago.

Chase Sapphire 50K- Will try to get $750 spend & transfer to CO. Will have to probably close my Marriott but that's ok as I'll get a new 50K bonus (but no free night cert) when I churn it later.

CO Biz ? Will try for the 50K bump but there's so far no code for it.

2nd Alaska from BofA- Got one 2 months ago and have an extra 5K line on it. Will say I need separate accounts for taxes.

2nd US Air from Barclays- Will close my Lufthansa for 5K credit line. Got 1st US 7 months ago.

Possible- AmEx and Citi Hilton 50K's.

Possible- AmTrak 32K or Priority 60K (80K bump?) from Chase instead of Sapphire if Sapphire looks to stay around.

If BofA or Barclays balk at 2nd cards I'll switch to Hawaiian and/or Air Tran though neither's too appealing.

You can transfer the Amtrak to HHonors without the $200 Amtrak spend as I recall.

Calm down a bit
 

It is easy to get carried away, kind of like at an auction when you get all caught up in the bidding action. While it is good to apply for several offers at the same time so each party does not see the other pulls necessarily one does need to calmly and rationally consider each offer. Right now there are only a couple good ones floating around.

Another point, while tempting to grab all the points you can, it is better to concentrate rewards in as few programs as possible. You don't want to end up with "stranded" points you can't use and/or lose unless you pay for that second year credit card fee.

As you can ascertain from the forums I think the SPG card is the go to card for everyday spend plus the ability to covert to airline points puts it at the top of most posters list. A Hilton card and a Priority One card should supplement the SPG and provide you access to quality hotels in most locations around the world.

Another point is to consider your annual spend. If you don't spend that much most of your points will come from the sign up. On the other hand if you have a business or substantial personal spend you can level out the points across your programs as necessary. Personally I would rather have a bunch of points with one airline, a bunch with SPG and either Hilton or PriorityClub.

I'm not sure how that shows that "it works". You got denied for half of the cards applied for.

Is this the one card where you get 50000 Priority Club points for $3k spend in 3 months? If so, I wasn't aware they had a code for $750 spend. Does anyone know what that code is? I got approved for the card for both my wife and I, and just waiting for it to come in the mail...thanks.

I think you mean Ultimate Rewards. And yes, the regular threshold is $3000

The code is GX1

You can read more about it Tuesday, August 2, 2011 post of http://www.frugaltravelguy.com/

And here - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...points-89.html

I'm far from a world expert on the subject, but my understanding was that issuers wised up and started utilizing ICS (Issuers' Clearinghouse Service):

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/854501/

I believe this includes same day inquiries (edit: looks like approvals report immediately). If so, said benefit of same day apps might be closer to myth than reality.

It works, as in, two personal card apps with the same bank result in one inquiry (true for both Amex and Chase). Chase did not know about my application with Citi 180 seconds prior to their application. And so on. With AMEX, Chase and BOA, I was still "using up" one inquiry and going with two cards. If I got the second one, fine, if not, I did not waste an additional inquiry on that by batching them in this churn.

On Chase, I am fairly confident that I can get the SWA card for dad but I want to wait until he has had the Continental card for 6 months so Chase does not take back the miles. That date is coming up in 10 days.

On Citi, doing a digging, a recon letter should do the trick (and not result in a new inquiry).

On BOA, dad and mom have a secured card with BOA since last October. I had called BOA earlier in the year to make these cards unsecured but the CSR said the timeline for that is one year (coming up). I knew I was taking a chance anyway with BOA.

If by success you mean only instant approvals, then this is not the right game. By my count, I already have 4 approvals and a very good chance to get 2 more. The BOA cards, in case of my dad, were known risks anyway and I decided to take that chance.

Perhaps you can share your experience.

wow 7 apps in a day. nice.

Not saying it isn't the case, but how could you validate this? To me the proof is in the pudding. Do those who apply for lots of cards on the same day get approved for more card bonues in the long run? I haven't seen that, other than for those who limit apps to specific issuer (e.g. to get 2 citi aa personal).

That's good, but I was more interested in if you had done what QL_714 asked about in the post below which you quoted and then said "it works".

Did you pull your reports right after the apps so you know what the other banks saw? That's the information I was hoping for as I don't have the experience to know this.

I'm not criticizing the approval/denial ratio, I just wanted to know your experience on when you pulled your reports to view your credit pulls.

Sure, but it won't be very helpful in this discussion. I have never applied for more than 3 cards at a time and don't utilize credit reporting services. I'm content to take things a few cards at a time and only target the largest bonuses (ever since Citi churning died). That said, I have only ever been denied for a Citi AA card as well as getting downgraded on a Miles & More Barclays card app.

WOW.

If I was your father I'd kill you.

You're destroying his credit. And you're going to do the same to your mother.

He's not destroying his father's credit. He's just limiting the potential for identity theft in the next 6 months. ;) Seriously though, if anything it will improve his father's long term credit.

+1. My parents had zero credit early 2010. And I mean zero credit cards, zero loans and zero lines in their credit file. They each now have over 40K of available credit. Utilization is constantly between 0-1%. Their scores are now in the 750 range. It won't get above that because they don't own real estate or have any auto loans. Inquiries barely make a ding in your scores over the long term.

And, I did pull credit reports after a couple of days after this churn. That's how I know that 2 applications for AMEX end up as inquiry, same for Chase and BOA. For Citi, I knew that I would get two hits because one application was personal and one was business.

saacman5033, As for pulling credit report right after the churn, I have done that in the past (3 months back on one of my own applications if I remember correctly). Nothing is reported until the next day, next morning is the earliest I have seen.