Those following along will remember that I ended up with a negative balance on my AMEX Blue and found getting AMEX to issue a refund check not as easy as advertised. Today the check showed up but it wasn't the normal kind of first class mail delivery. AMEX sent the thing in a UPS next day air envelope. I'm happy to get it fast, but it makes me realize this is an odd ball kind of situation for AMEX and they had a human doing some manual labor to process these things. On top of that, my credit union is holding the check for a week.
I suppose all's well that ends well (so far anyway), but I'm not going to be using this technique again. I still think I could pass a financial review but I really don't want to go through it. I'm hoping that the fact that I do a lot of business with American Express (going back to 2000) and that I don't have any 0% debt with them will keep me out of trouble.
On another topic, my current TrueCredit FAKOs are 766/759/759.
Hey Pug, which cards have you gotten 0% money out of and which methods did you use?
I did my AOR just before you but just finished receiving the cards and getting my bank accounts squared away.
I'm going to pay off the 1st purchases this week to secure all the sign up bonuses and want to move into the BT money gathering stage....I'm just not sure how much luck I'll have getting that money into my accounts
There's a whole thread on that topic, but I'm guessing you've seen that and are just wondering the details of my particular case.
Kroger - BT'd from existing AMEX Blue Cash. Citi Diamond AMEX (2) - Haven't actually done anything with these yet. They are both small lines but I need to get on it. UPS Capital Business - Wrote the convenience check on the card carrier to myself. Deposited it in my checking account. Advanta Business - BT'd from my existing Chase Business Card. Sony Visa - Wrote the convenience check on the card carrier to myself. Deposited it in my checking account. CitiBusiness with TY network - No BT yet, but this card gives you up to 12 months to BT. When you do you get 12 months of 0% Discover Gas Card - BT'd from AMEX Blue Cash. Left a cushion to buy gas at 5% discount for 12 months at 0% PNC Select Rewards - BT'd from Fido 529 Card and AMEX Business Platinum
Note, this whole business of from and to still confuses me. When I say I "BT'd from" what I mean is that I transferred a balance from an old card to one of my new AOR cards.
You can see how I got a negative balance on my Blue Cash card. I have an amazing amount of charge volume every month on several cards (business expenses) but because of bad timing and a lot of BT's I ended up negative on that one card.
Sorry there is nothing that interesting to see here, but those Chase cards make it easy. It doesn't get much easier than writing yourself a check.
I got a 30 point drop in one day when Chase Sony started reporting. That was my largest personal line and I went to 89% utilization on it. (On my other personal lines I'm aiming for 49%.) Things are going to get worse before they get better since some new personal lines are not yet reporting. It really makes me appreciate my business cards. With Advanta, I believe I charged within $100 of my limit. The damage to my credit reports? Zilch. For those who are able, business cards seem (to me) the best way to do this.
For those of you contemplating doing this, you have got to be prepared for this credit score torture. Day by day, the score drops and drops and it's not fun too watch. You'll also be seeing it ever day if you are pulling daily for bumpage. I'm hopeful that in about 60 more days the scores will bottom out and start climbing.
OK, back to the ThankYou network. For those of you who haven't carried Citi cards before (like me) and are unfamiliar with the ThankYou network (like me), I have got good news. It look like it's a super easy program to use and they combine all the points from your various cards for you flawlessly. What a pleasant surprise! Another surprise is that Citi seems to be counting purchases from Meijer (similar to Wal-Mart Supercenter) as grocery purchases. I'm pretty sure my AmeEx Blue Cash card does not count Meijer as grocery purchases. So more good news.
Wait, I hear you say. You can't use those Citi cards for purchases if you are playing the BT game. Right, but I made a $5 Meijer purchase to trigger the 10,000 TY points. I then paid it off online, waited for the payment to post, then requested a check from Citi. Citi is making my life very easy. I thought Chase was making it easy by giving me checks on the card carrier but I'm giving the edge to Citi as of today.
One last thing. What do you do with all those ThankYou points? I don't know how I'm going to spend mine yet but, as usual, FW has suggestions..
This is premature, since I haven't yet completed all of my BTs, but after all the cards come in and the balances are transferred (and the FAKOs drop), you are going to start asking "What next?" Specifically, what happens at the end when all the 0% offers expire and you are left with a pile of credit cards, many of which you have no use for.
Like almost everything, the answer to that question is buried with FW. Or more accurately, bits of the answer are buried in a thousand places throughout FW. If you are like me and have three kids, two dogs, one wife, and business to tend to, you don't have time to mine FW for the components of the answer and then synthesize the final answer. I shouldn't even be writing this now. It's 9:45 in the morning and I most definitely should be working.
Luckily, "My Money Blog" has wrapped it up the answer in a nice little package.
One word of caution, you certainly lose something by not doing all the grunt work and coming up with your own answers, and using the prepackaged answers can cause you problems if those answers are incomplete (see my AMEX problem above), but there are only so many hours in a day. In my own life I have had to accept that there are just too many FW Finance "angles" and I'm not going to be able to exploit all of them. The "My Money Blog" recipe is what I'm going to follow.
markkundinger
Senior Member - 2K
posted: Feb. 21, 2007 @ 10:27a
Heck, you still have a while left before playing out the post-AOR phase, but that recipe seems like solid advice.
Personally, I'm probably going to leave most cards open, but close (hopefully consolidate) just a few that have annual fees.
This is my TrueCredit FAKO log to date. Note I don't have the FAKOs before I applied for the cards. In retrospect, that was silly of me. The order is TransUnion/Experian/Equifax. My actual Google spreadsheet has more information than this. For example, it logs number of inquiries, number of accounts closed/open and (aggregated) balances. If anyone wants to see that level of detail PM me and I'll invite you to the spreadsheet.
1/18/2007.761.765.732. 1/19/2007.761.765.732. 1/20/2007.761.765.719.New Discover account reporting 1/21/2007.761.765.719. 1/22/2007.761.765.719. 1/23/2007.761.765.719. 1/24/2007.761.765.730.Probably Blue Cash payment reported 1/26/2007.761.765.730. 1/27/2007.761.759.730. 1/28/2007.761.759.730. 1/29/2007.761.759.730. 1/30/2007.761.759.730. 1/31/2007.761.770.759. 2/01/2007.755.764.759. 2/02/2007.766.764.759. 2/04/2007.766.759.759. 2/06/2007.766.759.759. 2/07/2007.766.759.759. 2/08/2007.766.759.759. 2/09/2007.766.759.759. 2/10/2007.766.763.759.Removed long closed BoA account from Experian 2/11/2007.766.733.759.Kroger 123 reporting to Experian 2/12/2007.735.721.759.Kroger 123 reporting to TU 2/13/2007.735.721.759. 2/14/2007.728.721.761. 2/15/2007.728.704.761.Chase Sony reporting to Experian 2/16/2007.725.704.761. 2/18/2007.725.704.724.Chase Sony reporting to Equifax 2/19/2007.695.704.724.Chase Sony reporting to TU 2/20/2007.695.695.724. 2/21/2007.695.695.724.
I never did a write up on this card and at this point I doubt I ever will, but I will share my original notes with you:
ANNUAL FEE: 0 % PURCHASE? No 0% BT TERM? 12 billing cycles 0% BT FEE? No (with application) REWARDS: $50 credit for $500 purchase by 6/1/2007.
This is a great card for AOR because it has no BT fee, but since there is not 0% on purchases and you have to put your BT's in with application, doesn't that make it hard to get the $50 bonus? I certainly thought so and I decided to not bother collecting it.
And that, friends, is why you need to do your research because it turns out you CAN collect the $50. I'm not sure if my original research was wrong or if PNC just doesn't give you the full story up front, but the key here is that PNC sends you 0% no-fee BT checks in the mail. So the easy way to go about getting the $50 is to charge up $500, pay it off, then wait for your BT checks in the mail and THEN do your BT. In other words, don't put your BT's on the application.
I know what you are thinking. "PugRanch, you are a genius." Not quite. Cyberkost schooled me on this in his (superior) AOR.
Not only that, but he got a much better line than I did. How? He just called and asked. Read all about it at his thread.
Let's see, what I am leaving out? Oh, yes, one downside is the BT checks don't come right away. Mine were not mailed until February 16th. So you might want to do the math and see if it's really worth it for you to get the $50 bonus factoring in your CL and how much of it you are going to utilize.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't point out the smoking deal Chase (First USA) has with their co-branded Countrywide card. Now this will only work for you if, like me, you have a mortgage with Countrywide, but if you do, check out their 2% rebate credit card with 0% BT offer. Find out how here.
I didn't apply for it since my credit stinks now, but my wife's credit is fine and she applied for it (wink) tonight and got instant approval. 2% can't be beat and the cap is $60k a year so this is going to be a great card for the next year or so. Never thought I'd put away my FIA 2% Fidelity 529 card, but for now, this beats it. (Why? 0% applies to purchases so you get a 2% kickback AND you don't have to pay it off for a year.)
A few months into this, I realize that I need to keep very careful track of when all these offers are ending. I haven't done a good job of that so far so at some point I'm going to have to take the time to make a list and make sure everything is paid off on time.
For Chase cards, you have to be especially careful about calculating the correct end date. See this thread.
Bumpage Update
I've pulled my credit reports about 45 times with no bumpage observed. I hope to be bumping TU inquiries shortly. I'll let you know when that happy day comes.
Card Offers
I got a $50 check from Card Offers yesterday. I was surprised to get it because I've read some bad things about Card Offers and I wasn't very impressed with their web site. I found it baffling, actually. But they came through for me with the check. It looks like they printed the check on their laser printer from QuickBooks (to give you an idea of how small they probably are) but money is money.
markkundinger
Senior Member - 2K
posted: Mar. 13, 2007 @ 5:31p
PugRanch said: A few months into this, I realize that I need to keep very careful track of when all these offers are ending. I haven't done a good job of that so far so at some point I'm going to have to take the time to make a list and make sure everything is paid off on time. Yep, as soon as I got a card, I either read the T&C super careful, or asked a CSR to confirm the exact date of promo expiration. Then I flagged that as a transaction for my review on my MS Money program to signify when I pay it off.
However, from the linked thread, I think I'll try calling Chase's 800 number to confirm the date.
Also, in the case of my premierpass card, it's extra complicated by the annual fee. I've incurring .50 finance charges due to a purchase made on it, so I want to pay off the entire balance, and cut off any more interest accrual, and do all of this so I can cancel the card before the annual fee kicks in. To be on the safe side, I've just schedule a payment at the 11th month mark for the entire balance plus .50 (predicted finance charge), before the statement cutoff. If that works I'll still have one month to cancel the card.
I'm becoming less enamored with the Citi Thank You network. I ordered a $100 Target gift card four weeks ago and the status is still processing.
Bumpage Works
I bumped all five inquiries off my TransUnion report which only bought me about 9 FAKO points. Of course several of the bumped inquiries were not recent anyway. I'm going to continue to pull my credit daily until I bump all seven Equifax inquiries off. At that point, if I'm in the profit maximizing mood I'll dump TrueCredit, but I have a feeling I won't be able to do that. I think I'll want to keep it for a year to watch what happens when all these balances are repaid.
With ThankYOUnetwork, don't they tell you the expected delivery time is 6-8 WEEKS? So why are you surprised about four-week lag time? Consider it a "rebate".
Looks like your scores are going up - congrats. Are you planning to drop the 89% utilization lower? As far as TrueCredit, you can probably pay for it with some of the sign-up bonus.
PugRanch said: Thank You Network - You're Not Welcome!
I'm becoming less enamored with the Citi Thank You network. I ordered a $100 Target gift card four weeks ago and the status is still processing.
Bumpage Works
I bumped all five inquiries off my TransUnion report which only bought me about 9 FAKO points. Of course several of the bumped inquiries were not recent anyway. I'm going to continue to pull my credit daily until I bump all seven Equifax inquiries off. At that point, if I'm in the profit maximizing mood I'll dump TrueCredit, but I have a feeling I won't be able to do that. I think I'll want to keep it for a year to watch what happens when all these balances are repaid.
Hm-m ... up until lately, gift cards from TY Network have been showing in like 1-2 weeks, much sooner than the advertised 6-8 weeks. But last time I ordered a student loan rebate and it took 6 weeks to show up (which may still be ok, since these are processed semi-manually). BTW $100 gas cards for 10K points are back ... my wife just ordered one last week (a gift from her new CITI Prof. card ) -- let's see when it shows up.
With truecredit -- what prevents you from cancelling when you see you got all the bumpage you could and then re-enrolling once you think you have all of the balances paid off? Or are you interested in tracking the exact dynamic of the scores?
Economist, you're presupposing I paid attention to what ThankYou said. I didn't. I guess the reason I was disappointed is I'm used to the Chase reward checks processing much much quicker.
I'm not planning on dropping the 89% utilization although I'm slightly worried about adverse action. What I have been thinking about doing is paying a bit more than the minimum on high utilization cards. My high utilization is with Chase and I have a 14 year track record with them so I don't think they'd drop me lightly.
Cyber, I think you're right that dropping TrueCredit and then signing up again later is the way to go. It's just one of those things where once you have that window into the black box it's hard to close it, but it IS $12 a month.
Bumpage is almost complete. One inquiry left on Equifax. Hopefully I bumped it tonight, however my Equifax FAKO is already amazingly high, 742. TU is 715 with 0 inquiries and Experian is 701 with 3 inquiries (can't bump them.)
Please wear orange and/or maroon Friday, April 20th or an orange and maroon ribbon.
Thanks, Pugranch, Virginia Tech class of '96.
evilbau
Ancient Member
posted: Apr. 19, 2007 @ 5:58p
I appreciate the commentary about specific cards. Thanks for reports on your experiences.
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