discoganya said:Let me take the risk of asking this supremely naive question: why do people do AORs?

Edit: Why the red? I did disclose my naivety ... I'm not being presumptuous, I really want to know.


Purple crayon explanation:

People do AOR's to get the free money that is offered to you when you first sign up. Lots of places offer $50 or $100 if you apply for a charge card with them and are approved.

They also do them to get balance transfer offers of a rate that is lower than they can get from a savings account, to make money.

If you get, say, $100,000 worth of balance transfer money that you can transfer into a savings or checking account, your bank will pay 4% or 5% interest on that money. If you have a 0% offer for 12 months, then you can make $4000 or $5000 in 1 year in interest on that money. Yes you have a minimum monthly payment, but so what? You're not paying any interest, and at the end of the year you will owe the $100,000 less any monthly payments you made.

The drawback is that you often get hit with a balance transfer fee. As of February, Citibank and others are not capping those fees (used to be 3% of the total balance or $75, whichever was less). So borrowing that $100,000, if you have to pay $3000 in balance transfer fees to get it, will not be such a great deal so people are going to have to watch that.

It's kind of a fun game if you are disciplined to make your payments, not spend the money you get, and not destroy your life in the process. I haven't the time to babysit an AOR myself, but it's fun and interesting to see what others do.

ETA, another aspect of AOR that I never see discussed is the liability of all that money just sitting around in accounts if you get sued or divorced. It isn't really your money because you borrowed from unsecured credit lines to get it, but it's definately an asset to be divvied up in the event of divorce or if you are sued and underinsured.

Weird things happen every day.

I am not going to say, you should apply for HSBC card. But, just as a data point, I applied for HSBC cash or fly CC during my last app-o-rama (not documented here at FWF) and got instant credit line of 23K.
My initial FICO score was 805 when I applied for 17 cards and receive 16 (got denied for one citi card – applied for too many at the time) of them.

Also, I don’t have high income or anything compare to guys here. And, at the time, I had only 32K parked in HSBC savings account. So, I was surprised when I got 23K line.

While you are at it, I strongly suggest getting free version of roboform or something similar. This helped me tremendously with my application process.

I started my AOR around 8:00AM EST and took me just over 90 minutes to finish all. All were done online.

needdealsnow said:Another thing you may want to do BEFORE the AOR is decide and setup the destination for the funds. Open the account. Setup a trial transfer etc.

I did my applications in about 2 hrs. But I spent ONE MONTH rate chasing between WS, MBNA-MOAA, MBNA-AAA, MBNA-NEA ELOAN. Basically a lot of trouble... Worth it I guess because I was moving a lot of money around but still it is something you can avoid.

HSBC was a big waste of time. I got 1K

I have already decided to park all money in my GMAC online savings account. After that I will research and decide in about a month's time if I want to leave the money there and move to high yield CDs.

Yes, roboform will be great help.

lahen said:I am not going to say, you should apply for HSBC card. But, just as a data point, I applied for HSBC cash or fly CC during my last app-o-rama (not documented here at FWF) and got instant credit line of 23K.
My initial FICO score was 805 when I applied for 17 cards and receive 16 (got denied for one citi card – applied for too many at the time) of them.

Also, I don’t have high income or anything compare to guys here. And, at the time, I had only 32K parked in HSBC savings account. So, I was surprised when I got 23K line.

While you are at it, I strongly suggest getting free version of roboform or something similar. This helped me tremendously with my application process.

I started my AOR around 8:00AM EST and took me just over 90 minutes to finish all. All were done online.

Hindu, I don't know if you already did the AOR, but I believe the Citi Professional was going for 0% for 12 months through Citi's site as opposed to the 9 months on CardOffers. I think the interest on the extra 3 months is greater than the $40, but I'm just guessing....

MosDeft said:Hindu, I don't know if you already did the AOR, but I believe the Citi Professional was going for 0% for 12 months through Citi's site as opposed to the 9 months on CardOffers. I think the interest on the extra 3 months is greater than the $40, but I'm just guessing....

I will be doing the AOR tomorrow. Yes, I thought about this but then I thought I could always reallocate my CL from Professional card to other Citi personal card. Or maybe not? I am not sure as Professional card is part personal part business card.

Hindustani said:MosDeft said:Hindu, I don't know if you already did the AOR, but I believe the Citi Professional was going for 0% for 12 months through Citi's site as opposed to the 9 months on CardOffers. I think the interest on the extra 3 months is greater than the $40, but I'm just guessing....

I will be doing the AOR tomorrow. Yes, I thought about this but then I thought I could always reallocate my CL from Professional card to other Citi personal card. Or maybe not? I am not sure as Professional card is part personal part business card.

You cannot reallocate from Citi Professional to another personal card. I tried, and so have many others, with no success. I don't know what Citi considers this card, as it shows up as a personal account.

Edit: Spelling, and read this thread.

Hi Hindustani,

Have you done the actual BT, especially from Citibank cards? I want to know if Citi would allow you to write the BT checks to your name to deposit to your account. Did you do that or made the check payable to your Bank name?

Thanks. Congrats on your aor!

Are there any reasons giving for the deferrment of so many cards for your AOR? Is it just me or is card deferrment a rising trend in many of the recent AOR threads?

BankofGreed said:Number of credit inquiries: 12 so far (3 on experian, 8 on equifax, 1 on transunion)

Would you mind telling us which issuer pulled which CR?

It is not easy to make out as the report shows the bank names and not the individual credit card names. Here are the bank names:

Experian:

- Citibank USA NA
- Elan Financial Services
- BOA MBNA

Equifax:

- First USA Bank
- Citi cards CBSDNA
- Citibank USA NA
- Citi cards CBSDNA
- American Express TRS
- Elan Financial Services
- GE Money
- Cap One Bank

Transunion:

- Cap One Bank

Looks like some banks pull from 2 credit agencies. Hope this helps.