Yeah, that's just an enormous amount of inquiries. I didn't even have half of that number of inquiries... AFTER I did my AOR. Also, I didn't notice before how all of your current accounts were kind of staggered over a few months, which also isn't very good. I felt before like it was possible to have a decent small AOR if you nuked your balances and pushed your score higher, but now I'm pretty sure you shouldn't even be considering an AOR for quite some time.

I'd start triple pulling to bump inquiries ASAP, wait a long time, and look into any possibilities of CLI without a hard pull with your current accounts. Chase will always hard pull on CLI requests, but I'm not sure on the rest. You could try the AMEX crack strategy I posted before, but I wouldn't do that until you've bumped a ton of those inquiries off.

DiabloD3 said:I'm not sure if its true or not, but I read somewhere here on FWF (I can't find it, and its been awhile) that if you're deployed overseas, you need a BoA account. I'm not sure if its the military won't pay you, or something else. Anyone here wanna chime in on this?

Why does that matter to you? Are you military? Are you deployed overseas?

not that your answers matter.... the RUMOR you were told is false...

BoA is an OPTION for those deployed... and they provide SERVICES like those found in US banks, because BoA is the current CONTRACTOR that supports these efforts. Before FURTHERING the rumor, you could have done a quick Google search... within the first few returns, you would have seen this:

Military Banking

As far as you keep calling it a Monoploy.... contracts are awarded after competition... appearently BoA had the best offer.

And now, since you keep changing the topic, and have not been too forthcoming with all your info, I am stepping out of the conversation... with 1 last fragment of advice:

Be patient, because TIME is the only thing that will help you in an AOR... your scores need to recover, your INQs need to drop off, and your current accounts need to AGE!

Tech
US ARMY (Retired)

Argh! Why does Citi tempt me /now/! They sent me an application for a credit card, and I know I'm going to be denied for it!

Hold up Technologist, at no point did I say I'm going to apply for it. Citi is tempting me, but I must say no. And its really hard too. BTW, Technologist, could you possibly answer my above question about bumping services? I'm finding conflicting information, and I'm not sure which ones still currently offer daily bumps.

Sorry Tech, I meant this question:

I want to confirm something: Experian is not effected by bumpage, and TrueCredit, PrivacyGuard, CreditKeeper, and PrivacySource all can generate daily bumps?

I don't mind paying for two or three of those for a few months if they allow me to daily bump, I'm just not sure which ones do it/still do it.

And its not that I hate BoA, its just that they look like a bank that I don't want to deal with. What really made me dislike them was when they lost customer information. Now, probably they've fixed those problems, but I still dunno.

If you guys still deal with them after all the problems they cause, then I may or may not consider them for a card, depending or not if they have any worth pursuing.

DiabloD3 said:I'm not sure if its true or not, but I read somewhere here on FWF (I can't find it, and its been awhile) that if you're deployed overseas, you need a BoA account. I'm not sure if its the military won't pay you, or something else. Anyone here wanna chime in on this?

That's sort of true.... They force everyone to have an illegal goverment travel card. Your employer can't legally force you to get a CC in your own name and currerntly it is DOD policy to do this with the Govt travel card. The flip side is that it isn't BOA policy rather a DOD one. I saw a story a year or so back in the AF times about a major and lt colonel that were forced out of the Air Force for refusing the goverment travel card.

chimeer said:DiabloD3 said:I'm not sure if its true or not, but I read somewhere here on FWF (I can't find it, and its been awhile) that if you're deployed overseas, you need a BoA account. I'm not sure if its the military won't pay you, or something else. Anyone here wanna chime in on this?

That's sort of true.... They force everyone to have an illegal goverment travel card. Your employer can't legally force you to get a CC in your own name and currerntly it is DOD policy to do this with the Govt travel card. The flip side is that it isn't BOA policy rather a DOD one. I saw a story a year or so back in the AF times about a major and lt colonel that were forced out of the Air Force for refusing the goverment travel card.

ummm, you have never been in the military, have you??

DoD Policy is the same as law... it is based on law, backed by CFR (code of Federal Regulations, etc.).

While REGULAR employers can't do certain things, DoD is exempt from some of those things... like OVERTIME! Could you imagine someone complaining that they haven't had a day off in 5 weeks, because they are in the middle of a WAR?

Your Regular employer can't hand you a weapon and tell you to go shoot at people... but the military can... does that make that illegal???

For more info on the travel card, and how BoA is the current contractor for this, go HERE!

There are all sorts of exemptions to the policy, to include someone's POOR finances...

Using this card actually HELPS young soldiers GET and KEEP good credit scores... BoA approves them easily, because they know the money is going to be repaid by DoD... it is almost as good a getting a secured CC. And DoD saves money, because they ONLY have one company to pay... cutting down on payment times and infrastructure costs...

Again, quit reading too much into the evil BoA... I happen to think they are pretty good, and have been banking with them (or predecessors) for 20+ years, without issue.

Update: I managed to convince Chase to move $500 from my Sony card to my Amazon card. This may or may not increase, decrease, or do nothing to my credit score. This was not AOR oriented, I just simply use my Amazon card more than my others due to the rewards. How I got past the 6 month age CL move rule I don't know.

charliek, its not that I didn't do my research, I'm just planning it a little early. I'm sitting and waiting until my scores climb back up, which may or may not be in 6 months.

Update: As of May 27th, myFICO ScoreWatch says my Eq score is 640, up from 631 the 20th.