So I had been taking baby steps into the whole BT game even before I ended up at fatwallet, and finally decided to do a “decent” size AOR.

AOR Focus: Mostly 0% bt offers, with a side focus on sign-up bonuses

HHI: $230k
Personal Income: $60k

Previous Credit Cards: (Pre-AOR)

Citi Driver’s Edge: $8,000
Citi Diamond Preferred Rewards Card: $23,000 (Grandfathered in under 5% EDP TYP Lifetime)

Chase Sony Card: $3,000
Chase Amazon.com Card: $6000

Navy Federal Credit Union Visa Platinum: $16,000

First Things First, Went Ahead and Tried CLI’s on all the cards for soft pulls.

Ended up with An additional 10,000 on the Driver’s Edge, and None on the Diamond Preferred, 6,000 on the Sony, and 3,000 on the Amazon.com

Then I moved all but 500 of the Driver’s Edge card to the Diamond Card to give a Total CL of $40.5k

Cards I applied for:

Personal Cards:
Name: /Cardselection Bonus /0% Offer /Signup bonus/ BT Fee Cap/Ann. Fee/BT Applied For On App
Citi Home Rebate $25 12 months None No Fee None No
Citi PP Elite None 15 months 25,000 TYP $250 $75 No
BoA Star Wars None 12 months 3,000 Points $75 None 20,000
AMEX Starwood $30 None 10,000 SP No Cap Free, then $30 No
Discover More Card None 0% July, 08 None $50 None 20,000 to Citi Diamond
AMEX Blue (targeted) None 12 months None No Fee None 17,500 to Citi Diamond
Wamu Espn(targeted) None 12 months 2500 Points $75 None 20,000 to Citi Diamond
Juniper NationalParks None 12 months None $50 None 20,000 to Citi Diamond

Business Cards:
Name: /Cardselection Bonus /0% Offer /Signup bonus/ BT Fee Cap/Ann. Fee/BT Applied For On App
Bank Atlantic Business None 15 months None $75 None 20,000 to Citi Diamond
Advanta Business None 12 months None $75 None 20,000 to Citi Diamond
Citi Professional None 12 months 15,000 TYP No Fee None No
Citi Business None 12 months 15,000 TYP No Fee None No
Citi Business PP None 12 months 15,000 TYP None FYF, $75 No
Chevy Chase Plat Visa None 12 months None $50 None No
AMEX Starwood $30 None 10,000 SP No Cap Free, then $30 No

Not a Big AOR, but then again I didn’t want to overpay my Citibank Card (or did I? 

Set-Up For My AOR: First I funded a new Citibank Savings Account with the Citi Diamond with $40,000 (No Cash Advance Fee  + 40k TYP :-D)

Then I applied For Business Cards First. Then Personal Cards. In Order Top To Bottom. However, I discovered the Juniper Cards (Bank Atlantic, and National Parks) 2days after the Initial AOR, so I applied for them two days afterwards.

Results:

Name: Approved? Credit Limit Notes:
Citi Home Rebate Yes 4,200 Low, But I have the old Citi Driver’s Edge I can move CL to and then Consolidate/Close to get the 0% re-allocation
Citi PP Elite Yes 15,000 Big Line, Even though I’ve already churned this card twice?
Star Wars Yes 22,500 I had the BOA rep cancel the APP BT request, after he offered to put it directly in checking (same fee)
AMEX Starwood Yes 3,400 Oh well, Not much I cand use this for other than Starpoints
Discover Card Eventually 8,000 They called me back at work, and wanted MY Annual Income not HHI Only gave me 1/3 of BT request...
AMEX Blue Yes, 18,000 Got The Full BT Requested (it was targeted?)
Wamu ESPN Yes 25,000 Instantly Approved for a 25,000 Limit, I was a little Surprised
Juniper National Parks Yes 22,500 Instantly Approved for a 22,500 Limit, 2 days after AOR inquireies hit. Wow!

Bank Atlantic Yes 25,000 Instantly Approved for a 22,500 Limit, 2 days after AOR inquireies hit. Wow again!
Citi Professional Yes 6,000 Deferred, but approved
AMEX Starwood Bus. Yes 5,000 AMEX was stingy other than the Blue Approval even though it was the last applied for (weird)
Chase Business Rebate Yes 8,000 T&C sent with Card have no cap on BT fee. Haven’t called yet to fight about it
Citi Business PP Yes 8,000 nothing really to say
Citi Business Yes 16,000 Going to Re-allocate to the PP then after 11 months move it to this one (Go Citi!)
Chevy Chase Bank Visa Yes 3,000 Ewwwww..... At least I wasn’t denied
Advanta Denied NA They didn’t like me for some reason... Oh well

Scores Before:
EXP/EQU/TU
737/742/744

Scores After:
EXP/EQU/TU
744/710/700

Experian was weird not really sure how my score managed to go up???

Juniper Cards were applied for two days after original AOR, but still instantly approved (and the BT’s showed up in my Citi account in two days!)

Inquiries:

All Citi Cards Pulled Equifax
Advant Pulled Equifax
BoA Pulled Experian
Discover Pulled Experian (a day after AOR maybe that’s why they called me?)
AMEX Pulled Experian
WAMU Pulled Experian

Barclays(aka Juniper) Pulled TU. Probably Explains why I got such high limits. No other issuer pulled TU, and new accounts hadn’t shown yet.

Final Tallies:

Credit Pre-AOR: $56,000
Credit Post-AOR: $240,600

Eventually The BT Arbitrage Will Be at Slightly Less than $120k
Want to keep under 50% Overall

All-In All I think everything turned out pretty well. Hopefully This Can Be Useful For Someone Out There.

Edit: Credit Scores
If Anyone's Interested I can Provide Some of the Links (non-targeted offers)
But most of these are familiar cards to the FW crowd

well done

congrats OP. Keep the post updated.

BTW, was Citi PP Elite a targeted offer? I see only 15k ThankYou points online.

markkundinger said:Good gaming on doing funding that bank account with your credit card in a massive way. What type of account did you open? And did you previously have a Citibank account?

What do you plan on doing with the BT money?

I already had a citibank account, but I did the whole sign out and create a new account trick to be able to use the CC to fund. This way I can get some extra TYP out of the whole deal.

After the account funded I just went to a citibank branch office and had them close the account and move it into my other older accounts. 40,000 TYP for a hard pull, I think that's probably worth it.

I'm still in the process of getting all of my money moved around (AMEX and Wamu are slow) but until everything gets sorted out I've got the rest of it parked at FNBO 6%

pdpyromaster said:Hindustani said:congrats OP. Keep the post updated.

BTW, was Citi PP Elite a targeted offer? I see only 15k ThankYou points online.


Citi ran a promotion a few weeks ago where tehy gave 25k for the PP Elite.

Citi PP Elite 25k Point Offer
Bank Of America Starwars Card
Bank Atlantic Business Card

Ok, thanks. BTW, $120k in BT money is really an achievement. Congrats on that.

Chevy Chase (a.k.a., Fletch) Business Visa...interesting.

I see it's serviced by First USA, and they do a lot of Chase (as in JP Morgan Chase) cards. Did you try for a CLI at activation? They will sometimes allow CLIs for new cards.

Speaking of which, why no Chase (proper) business cards?

whoops, sorry about that. i was looking at your cards "applied for." missed it in the results.

what about the activation CLI with Chevy Chase?

might be worth a call to a CSR. a "CLI at activation" doesn't have to be literally at activation. you're basically asking for reconsideration of the original, probably computerized, CL decision.

Set-Up For My AOR: First I funded a new Citibank Savings Account with the Citi Diamond with $40,000 (No Cash Advance Fee  + 40k TYP :-D)

Can you please explain how did you do this to get 40k TYP? Thanks.