I had Capital One for 6 years as my first credit card and the limit was originally $500, then raised to $1,000 maybe around year 3. I asked for a credit limit increase in late fifth year/early sixth year, but, if I remember correctly, there's a message that says they'll review your account periodically and you can't request a limit yourself.

I then opened my second premium card (had other "trash" credit store cards) with Chase and got a $4,000 limit. Within a month, Capital One raised my credit limit to $4,000 Chase just raised my limit to $6,000 without my requesting it (8 months after opening account), so I'll bet on Capital One matching that again.

About them not reporting credit limits, at least they will be soon.

markkundinger said:lhendricks92 said:my wife, with $300K of total CL with other issuers, received a whopping $1K of CL on her first CapOne card. She submitted a BT request of $30K. What gives? Should she request a CLI at activation? Any other tips to get out of the "subprime" category?
Ouch. My 30k BT request only got me a $2k credit limit.

But $1000 doesn't even sound like Capone's "prime" cards. Can you tell if your wife got a "semi-prime" card?

How can I tell? I think it's a No Hassle cash reward card? The app said minimum CL of $1K. This was at the end of an app spree netting about $250K of new personal and business credit. Don't know if they got freaked about all the inquiries and/or a few couple of new accounts. Maybe too much available credit elsewhere? I have no clue what they were thinking - I would have preferred a flat rejection.

therivler1 said:

When they send you those purchase checks, write one for your whole credit line, deposit it in the bank, and pay it back after your statement closes. That way your highest credit used = credit limit.

This is a good idea, however on an 8000k credit limit the fee of 3% would come to 240.00 you would be paying to boost your score after one month. FICO has become too commercialized with everybody paying to see their score or paying throughout the year to monitor it. My FICO scoring come's free with my Providian statement each month. All 3 bureau's are now using the Vantage scoring model as the internal inter-office score. But still, you could do that with a smaller credit line of say, 3000.00 and pay 90.00 in fee's. My credit bureau reports suggested adding an installment loan to round out my credit history. So i would pay the interest over 6 mos or 1 year to do that. Something i may do though.

For "BT laundering" purposes, having a book of purchase checks can be helpful. Just multiply the number of checks with the value of CL and you'll get the amount of BT you'll be able to move to deposit accounts using Cap1.
Don't try to deposit more than your CL, even if you have 10 times more than the CL, you'll get hit with a NSF fee. At least this happened to me this winter (my CL was then $1K and I wrote a check for $1.3K, I had overpaid more than that).

On the bright side, the NSF fee was only $5. (BofA, NEA MMS account). But I was then really close to the whole castle of sand being destroyed by the BofA wave: I had also had deposited a PenFed convenience check which was covered, but a few days I could see online, "au bout du souffle" from Europe, how there was a temporary withdrawal for the whole Penfed check amount. I guess they couldn't contact me by phone to tell me the "good news" about the Cap1 check and assumed the PenFed check would bounce too.

bump

I didn't have a preapproval offer when I applied for my Biz CapOne. I picked the "excellent credit" filled out my info and got approved w/ $7k limit. I use this card extensively for out of country travel. I didn't fill out any BT requests at the time of application, as there wasn't a place for it on biz app (this might have changed). I think I also got 15 mo 0% intro on purchases - I'm not using the checks they sent as I'm already chewing through half of my CL just through my own expenses.

from another thread...

sonnysighedup said:lhendricks92 said:I wish we could figure out CrapOne's CL algorithm. The wife picked up a 1K line in her last A0R. She didn't even bother to activate it. As a data point, she requested a 20K BT, but she didn't have a targeted offer. Maybe the latter helps.

My theory is this: tiny limit (less than 1K), left-over cards from BofA and Juniper put her in CapOne's subprime bucket, despite having several 30K+ CL lines with a variety of issuers. I wouldn't be surprised if these low limit lines cause harm in some lenders' proprietary models, even though they don't affect FICO.

lhendricks92, do you remember what kind of FICOs(FAKOs) & number of inquiries your wife had before applying? I don't think you need a targeted offer to get in good with CapOne (though I bet it helps), but I do think scores and inquiries (and perhaps number of new accounts) make a big difference.

Her EQ FICO was around 770 with about 10 new accounts in the previous 12 months. No EQ or TU inquiries and about 4 from EX.