penumbra222 said:With the PenFed account, do you "launder" the balance through a cash advance with no fee or by some other method?They do no-fee 5.49 BTs to just about anywhere with a phone call, and they sometimes send out convenience checks too. As mentioned above, that's one reason this card is a must have for serious credit profiteers.

JuNooNi said:Hi congratulatons jaircon for your successful AOR. I would like to know if anybody have experiences with citibank BT offer with new account. I got like 3 new cards from them during my last AOR and I also have one card from them since early 2006, citidividend card which was originally PP card but after getting $50 GC and $40 Cardoffers.com bonus, I converted it to Dividend Card in March 2006 and I have been using it heavily for purchases till last month. I have seen 0% BT offer with this card on the website and it says for 12 months after my first BT. Does anybody knows is there any Time frame that you have to do BT on this card or this offer will expire anytime whenever citi likes it . I have heard that you have 1 year from account opening date to do a BT. Is it correct ? Even though I have converted this card from Primier pass to Dividend card in march 2006 and PP was originally issued in Jan 06 so my 1 year Time Frame (if it's True) starts from Jan 06 or March 06? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks a lot.

I think your best bet is to call the customer service number on the back of your card and ask them directly. In general - new citibank credit cards have 12 month period to initiate the BT and once the BT is initiated then the 12 month intoductory period will start. However, if you applied with certain promotion codes, then the terms might be different. It's always best to just call and ask.

markkundinger said:I think, if we're having a contest over who's credit score drops more, you might win.

Mark, thanks for the info on the privacy matters "cancelled" membership. I was a bit worried that I'm still getting their credit alerts, so I didn't do any CR pulls just so that I won't get charged. I finally pulled one today.

5/16 vs 5/22 vs 6/15 FAKO scores:
Tru: 765 --> 776 --> 767
Exp: 778 --> 778 --> 768
Equ: 746 --> 743 --> 732

Here is the final inquiry list:
RBS NB CC 05/19/2006 Experian
RBS NB CC 05/19/2006 TransUnion
FNB OMAHA 05/16/2006 Equifax
HSBC NV 05/15/2006 Experian
PENTAGON 05/15/2006 Equifax
ADVANTA 05/15/2006 Equifax
DISCOVER 05/15/2006 Equifax
FIRST USA 05/15/2006 Equifax
CITI 05/15/2006 Equifax
CITI 05/15/2006 Equifax
FUSA, NA 05/15/2006 Equifax
BK OF AMER 05/15/2006 TransUnion
GMAC BANK 05/15/2006 TransUnion
WASHMTL/PROV 05/15/2006 TransUnion

None of the BTs are reported yet. Only 4 cards have reported so far (discover, BofA, hsbc, citi). So that still leaves out RBS x2, chase x2, and providian.

I'm very glad that I made those payments to RBS (they posted the same day, which is nice) - since these will very likely be reported quite soon.

I love it, when a person can ask for a BT into a checking account. Money from HSBC posted in my bank in less than 2 days! That's even faster than a BT btw two credit card accounts!

The last of the cards (chase cash plus) arrived yesterday. I'll quickly make one transaction to get that $100 credit and then I'll have to think about how to re-allocate the credit lines. This means that I will probably not be doing a BT from the SonyCard - since with the fees it doesn't make sense to do 2 BTs, rather one BIG one.

nymgiants said:When you did an advanta BT, were you able to transfer to a personal account or did you have to transfer the balance to a business cc?
When I received my card, I also received a number of checks from Advanta. I called their customer service to ask if these were the checks to use for a balance transfer and they told me it's easier if they take the info over the phone. So I asked whether the amount of BT could be sent directly to a bank and I was told that it's definitely possible. They didn't send it through ACH, they most likely mailed a real check - because she didn't want a routing number, all she wanted was an account number and the mailing address. The funny thing is, that the BT was charged right away on the advanta account while it will take up to 7 days before the bank actually sees the check.

It ia amazing that most were EQ and two TU, none for EX??????????????? Any reason / ideas why?

jairocon said:Just signed up for the privacymatters 7 day free trial - to keep an eye on things.
Right now I have these pulls already posted:

HSBC NV 05/15/2006 Experian
PENTAGON 05/15/2006 Equifax
ADVANTA 05/15/2006 Equifax
DISCOVER 05/15/2006 Equifax
FIRST USA 05/15/2006 Equifax
CITI 05/15/2006 Equifax
CITI 05/15/2006 Equifax
FUSA, NA 05/15/2006 Equifax
GMAC BANK 05/15/2006 TransUnion
WASHMTL/PROV 05/15/2006 TransUnion

Dave is quite right, I should have gotten a much sooner start - I didn't even think that starting around 3 pm CT would be already slightly late (esp. on Monday). I will check the reports in 24 hours to see what else is new.

Right now the FAKO scores seem to be:
transunion 765
experian 778
equifax 746
(Didn't check these before the applications). True myfico (based on equifax) was 785 on Friday.

tazmania99 said:No surprise here. Most banks start charging interest once a check is issued, not until cleared. Citi is one typical example.

jairocon said:nymgiants said:When you did an advanta BT, were you able to transfer to a personal account or did you have to transfer the balance to a business cc?
When I received my card, I also received a number of checks from Advanta. I called their customer service to ask if these were the checks to use for a balance transfer and they told me it's easier if they take the info over the phone. So I asked whether the amount of BT could be sent directly to a bank and I was told that it's definitely possible. They didn't send it through ACH, they most likely mailed a real check - because she didn't want a routing number, all she wanted was an account number and the mailing address. The funny thing is, that the BT was charged right away on the advanta account while it will take up to 7 days before the bank actually sees the check.

on your advanta app, did you use a business name or simply used your name as the business name?

Just an update:

Today's FAKO scores: 747/711/699 (TU/Exp/Equi).

All the lines have been already reported.

Outstanding BTs:
Advanta at 96%
Disc for life at 89%
BofA at 89%
RBS 1 at 89%
RBS 2 at 89%
HSBC at 49%
Providian at 49%

Current Overall Utilization: 29.49%

Reallocated Chase CLs to get one card with $36.9k CL - will do a BT shortly.
Reallocated Citi Cls to get one card with $24.2k CL - will be used as a recipient of the Chase BT.

Unused BTs:
CitiDiamond - will take it out when some of these shorter term BTs are paid off (have 10 months to take it).

In btw I was able to get my personal AMEX CL increased from $5k --> $9.2k with online CLI button. This is especially nice since I got a CLI in May from $500 --> $5k. So that's a $8.7k CLI in less than 2 months w/o hard pull. Should help with the overall utilization. I have another $13.3k CL in AMEX business - it would be nice if I could move most of that CL into personal to bring down the overall util even lower. This re-allocation is not available online (temporarily?), I'm not sure if I should call AMEX and ask them to re-allocate this line.

Rewards:
Got my $100 first purchase bonus from Chase Rewards
Got my 10k thank you points from Citi Diamond
Didn't get my $100 bonus from Chase Sony yet (8-12 wks)
Got my $50 BofA checking bonus
Got $5 dividend for doing a BT using Citi Dividend card

Notes:
Currently my CitiDividend card has a promotion that every BT over $1.5k earns $5 dividend. I also have a no-fee BT offer right now until august. So I'm just going to try and ask for maybe 5-10 smaller amount BTs to get extra dividend dollars. The BTs don't post until I cash the check in the bank. So I'm going to ask for a small check every day and then once I get them all in mail, I'll cash them on the same day to minimize any possible APR. I will probably not pay any APR, because by the time I cash these, the chase BT will post into my CitiDividend account. I could possibly net another $50. I wish I knew this before - I took out over $10k BT from Citi to drain the account last month. If I knew, I would have split it up into multiple checks.

Since I had $35k laundered into my CitiDiv card - I'm running a little experiment. I get $5 dividend dollars for every BT over $1,500 and right now I have no BT fees.

So I've been BT-ing from Citi to a number of possible places

These are some preliminary results:

Credit Cards:
Sending a BT to Chase... took 3 days
Sending a BT to Discover... took 1 day
Sending a BT to RBS... took 1 day
Sending a BT to MBNA... took 3 days

Requesting a check:
Getting a BT check from Citi... took 7 days.

Debit Cards:
Sending BT to AmericanBank (pcbanker.com) debit card... took 7 days.
Sending BT to USAA checking debit card... NO DATA YET

Bank Accounts:
Sending BT to GMAC (sent it to GMAC MMS account number, not even a debit card)... took 6 days
Sending BT to Netbank (sent it to Netbank account number, not even a debit card)... NO DATA YET

It's surprising that the money found it's way through to GMAC with just the account number. I might try an experiment of sending it to GMAC on the same day using an account number and also a debit card number to see which one is faster.

Citi has not complained yet about all these transfers - which is good. Banks haven't complained yet either.

Since it took a while and I was worried that these debit card/bank account transfers might get rejected, I have already requested most of my balance in checks. I have about $3.8k left to play with as of this morning. Citi has a $100 minimum for a BT. So I'll do 2 more $1.5k BTs and then try 8 BTs o $100 into my other bank accounts. I'll update as I get more data.

Btw, only the credit card BTs were immediatelly charged on the Citi account. The checks, debit cards and bank account BTs have not been charged yet (I think they wait for the clearance by the recipient banks).

i wanted to bt from hsbc to bank of america debt card but not sure if it would work. are there any risk?

jairocon said:Since I had $35k laundered into my CitiDiv card - I'm running a little experiment. I get $5 dividend dollars for every BT over $1,500 and right now I have no BT fees.

So I've been BT-ing from Citi to a number of possible places

{snip}

Citi has not complained yet about all these transfers - which is good. Banks haven't complained yet either.

Since it took a while and I was worried that these debit card/bank account transfers might get rejected, I have already requested most of my balance in checks. I have about $3.8k left to play with as of this morning. Citi has a $100 minimum for a BT. So I'll do 2 more $1.5k BTs and then try 8 BTs o $100 into my other bank accounts. I'll update as I get more data.


Have you received the $5 into your rewards account for all these BTs?