- Yesterday, I went ahead and applied for a BofA business card. Don't know what the story is with the BT fees. Don't know the deal with possible reallocation. Didn't care, figure it was worth a shot.

A bunch of mail arrived Friday/Saturday

- Got my first denials:
-- First Bankcard (presumably UBOC) (excessive inquiries)
-- National City (excessive new trade lines in last 12mo, excessive inquiries)
-- Wachovia (length of time accounts established too short, lack of recent installment loan info, too many inquiries in last 12mo)

- Received the AMEX Business Gold card. Activated and made a purchase.

- Received the AMEX SimplyCash card. No new credit was granted, they simply took all but $500 of the limit from my Hilton card and reallocated. Activated, reallocated credit to IN:LA, and bought my first tank of gas.

- Received the AMEX IN:LA card. They granted $10,000 of (new) credit. I reallocated the bulk of my AMEX credit to the card ($34k total), and then requested a $33k BT to a Citibank card. I expect this will kick off my Inevitable Financial Review most expeditiously.

- Received the (Elan) Woodforest Bank card. Holy crap I didn't realize that Elan was owned by US Bank! Their mailers and phone system and website are very similar. Activated, then inquired about a CLI, no dice. Requested a BT of $4500 to a Citibank card.

- Received the US Bank Platinum card. Activated, asked about CLI (no dice). Asked if credit could be reallocated with Elan cards (nope). Then requested a BT of the entire limit ($7k) to a Citibank card.

- Received WAMU card. Activated, asked about CLI (no dice, they say reviews are automatic). Since BT deal is 9mo, and my credit limit of $3k doesn't even hit the max BT fee, I estimated that it's roughly a breakeven (or worse) proposition to use the BT offer. So I sockdrawered the card. It will be nice to get pFICO scores though.

- Recieved the HSBC card with the chump $600 CL. Activated and asked for CLI. No dice. Sockdrawered card. I am sorely tempted to close the card on general principle, but I will keep it around for a few months to see if they send any zero-fee convenience checks like I got with my GM Flexcard last year.

- Received Barclays/Juniper I Fly card. Activated, asked about CLI (no dice). Asked about limitations on enclosed convenience check (none). I'm going to deposit near the $7.5k limit into my Fidelity account.

- Received Barclays/Juniper/BankAtlantic Business card. I accidentally received two "employee" cards as well as the main one, oops. No convenience checks included in package. Was too late to call anyone, so will see what I can do on Monday.

- Did some preperatory CL reallocation with Chase and FIA/BofA. Just trying to get more of the credit into one place to make the allocation to the presumed new cards easier.

- Unrelated to the AOR, but I received new plastic for my original Discover card. I think they wanted to make sure I wasn't dead. They offered a really poor 3mo BT deal, which I politely declined.

- Made chump purchases of gas with several of the new cards, just to count the "first transactions". I was at the pump for several minutes, and only ended up with 2 gallons.

I'm leaving town next week for a business trip. Kind of a bummer since I'm expecting plastic from the big three of Chase, Citibank, and BofA. My mailbox will probably be stuffed to the gills.

I'm out of town this week, so I'm (hopefully) missing out on a ton of mail with great results. However, I logged into my BofA account and saw the generic (no-fee) visa with a $8000 credit limit. No obvious signs of credit being stolen from other cards. I look forward to reallocating the ever-loving crap out of that card in the very near future.

edit: additional micro-update, got an email from citibank that I was approved for the personal DPR card. Credit limit unknown.

Well, I got home last night from a weeklong business trip, and my mailbox was predictably stuffed full. (At least I didn't get a nasty note from the mail-lady saying I needed to reclaim my mail at the post office.)

- Applied for a CLI on my Wells Fargo card, decision deferred.

- Received a denial from UMB for their card. The reason? Residence out of lending area. Doh. Guess I needed to be closer to Missouri.

- Received the following cards, with indication of credit limits I didn't know about before: Chase Business Rewards ($8000)), Chase UA Mileage Plus ($8000)), CitiBusiness w/TYP($15000)), CitiBusiness PremierPass ($10000)), RBS Kroger 123 ($6500)), and CitiProfessional ($9000)).

- Also received the Chase Sony and Citi PremierPass Elite, though I already knew their limits.

- Checking BofA online, I also see I'm approved for the Platinum Plus Business Rewards card, with a CL of $8,000.

(Note that $8,000 must be the new magic number for this AOR)

- This leaves only one application I don't know the status of: the FNBO/Infibank/Principal Bank card (which I presume was declined)

- Called up RBS to see what I could do with the credit line. CSR was nice, first checked into a CLI, but that's not available until the account ages 6 months. Then she checked into reallocation consolidation with my regular RBS card. Not possible, it's only offered for the "same type" of cards (two RBS cards, two Kroger cards, etc). Also learned that I should receive some convenience checks very soon, so that will be my deposit method.

(you can, by the way, manage both accounts online using the same login at rbsnb.com)

- I am in the process of making initial purchases with the Sony, Chase UA, and all Citibank cards so I can get their respective signup bonuses. Note that I am also going to repay the Citibank cards within 2 days so I can do balance transfers on them and not worry about accruing finance charges on the purchases.

- Called up Citibank to see what I could do with credit limits. Just like last year, the different restrictions with business cards are pretty random. You can't reallocate or consolidate between business accounts. But you can reallocate personal to business. So I dropped the (personal) PremierPass Elite from $12,000 to $4,000, which is the minimum, and allocated that to the CitiBusiness card, bringing the CL up to $23,000. Only one reallocation request is allowed to be "in-flight" at any one time, so after this one is complete, I'm going to keep reallocating from other cards to this one until I can't allocate any more.

As for the CitiBusiness PremierPass card, I'm still going to do the max out the BT deal on it, but since I'll need to close the card before the annual fee kicks in, that will truncate the BT from a full 12 months, so I'm not going to reallocate anything additional to it.

Also, I asked the very nice CSR about direct ACH transfer to my bank account. She said it wasn't available for my particular account, and it wasn't as common, which she attributed to fraud potential (As opposed to BT checks, which have to be activated over the phone before use).

- Called up Chase to reallocate credit. Got the bulk of my business credit on the Rewards card (which has the 0% offer), and got the bulk of personal credit on the Lasalle bank card. I'm going to try to reallocate the bulk of the personal credit to the business account as well, but Chase's systems are offline at the moment, so I have to wait a day or two.

markkundinger said: Called up Citibank to see what I could do with credit limits. Just like last year, the different restrictions with business cards are pretty random. You can't reallocate or consolidate between business accounts. But you can reallocate personal to business. So I dropped the (personal) PremierPass Elite from $12,000 to $4,000, which is the minimum, and allocated that to the CitiBusiness card, bringing the CL up to $23,000. Only one reallocation request is allowed to be "in-flight" at any one time, so after this one is complete, I'm going to keep reallocating from other cards to this one until I can't allocate any more.

As for the CitiBusiness PremierPass card, I'm still going to do the max out the BT deal on it, but since I'll need to close the card before the annual fee kicks in, that will truncate the BT from a full 12 months, so I'm not going to reallocate anything additional to it.

Knowing this might help:

1. I got Citi Biz Platinum w/TY (20K), Cit Biz PremierPass(15K), and Citi Prof (2K) cards in May. Also had a Driver's Edge with a large CL for about 10 years. Called both to the personal and biz departments for multiple relocation attempts. The only one that succeeded was from Citi PremierPass to Citi Biz, resulting in 5K-30K distribution. I had to call twice for this to happen. So I would suggest calling once more, just in case another rep does it. Also, several relocation attempts out of Driver's Edge failed consistently, because in Dec that got converted to a World Master card with no pre-set spending limit. Such bullshit - does not report CL, or largest balance ever, and screws up some FAKO scores (but not FICO).

My strategy is this:
- (already) have a large BT out of the Citi Biz Plat w/TY,
- use Citi Biz Premier Pass for flight points (1 point per mile flown by ANYONE as long as ticket purchased by that card), and double-dip on points. If the initial 15K TY Bonus points can be used to match with, then I will quickly amas another 15K points using 5-6 flights.

6 months later:
- use the Premier Pass free companion program to try go to Hawaii in winter with girlfriend,

10-11 months later:
- 1 week before the 1-year anniversary, make a small BT, e.g. $100 out of the Biz Premier Pas,
- pay the Citi BIZ balance in FULL by the due date, then ask for the credit limit to move to Premier Pass,
- if last step succeeds, BT out of Premier Pass.

This way, I double-dip in the aggregate amount of the Credit Lines between the two cards without applying for new cards.

If credit limit allocation does not succeed, close PremierPass.

- I received the BofA Generic Platinum card. Called in, got a very helpful BofA rep (must have been one of the "good" ones). Asked if credit could be reallocated between business-personal. It can't. She offered the idea of reallocating from other cards. I reallocated from my unused FIA Schwab card, and made the Generic card have a $23k credit limit. Requested the entire amount direct deposited to my checking account. (I also inquired on the statement date, and will make a payment before then to drop utilization down <90%.) My Fidelity brokerage account routing number set off a red flag on their system, so I had to give them an actual checking account at an actual bank. Fortunately since the DD will be via ACH, I don't have to worry about long holds on checks. Anyway, I found the process to be remarkably quick and easy.

- Was able to reallocate a bunch of personal credit at Chase to my business card with the 0% offer. While it will reduce my global apparant credit limit, it will also keep my utilization from going to hell when I max out the card. Still need to reallocate some business credit before I write the BT check though.

- Getting a little impatient on the Citibank side. On one card, I requested a credit balance refund, which will probably take a dang long time to process. On another card, I'm waiting for a couple of BTs to hit in the first place. And on yet another card, I'm waiting on several credit lines to be reallocated.

- Applied for a BofA Checking account using the $100 bonus link. Funded it with $1000 from my USAA credit card which currently has a credit balance due to BTs.

- Opened a Citibank Ultimate Money Account just to upgrade the yield from my e-savings. Applied from within my citibank login, so it was really quick and easy.

- Went through the initial process of opening an FNBO account, despite their eccentricities. Went through the app, funding process (I used a bank account where my login and password would work) and online ID profile creation pretty quickly. I only funded the account with a dollar though, since I know the delays might be killer.

Anyway, FNBO will probably be my first account for rate-chasing the BT money. Possible followup contenders include the BofA affinity account and SalemFiveDirect (If I have a balance reliably over $100k).

Technologist said:Mark (can I call you Mark, or do I have to say the whole thing... markkundinger), are you doing all your BT's to ONE CITI Card? If so, check my post on "data points for citi" thread is HERE!

It may start you at the end... just go to front and read it....

IF you do all to ONE Citi card, THEN open a savings ACCOUNT, and fund it ALL from the CREDIT you have on that card... LOL!

AND you may actually get TYP for doing it (which is MY hope, for my upcoming AOR!!!).

GREAT thread, and I wish you the best

Has anyone actually tried this? If it works, I can make a killing on TYPs. WOW!!

Any citibank deposit account can be funded with a credit card as an alternate option, as long as you aren't logged in as yourself. I'm probably going to give it a shot soon. It's not something I recommend abusing. Once you have 13 Ultimate Savings Accounts, citibank might know that you're up to something.

I did the BankAtlantic BT to a citi card. Took a little over a week. Now I am impatiently waiting for the credit balance refund process.

I also received the convenience checks from BankAtlantic. They are indeed treated as cash advances. I threw them away.

emaij said:How are your mutual funds doing over the past week?Lol! That's a low blow. Personally, I view these days as buying opportunities and have invested a a couple thousand dollars this week into my mutual funds. Hopefully I am buying stuff on sale and it will appreciate in value over time.

emaij said:How are your mutual funds doing over the past week?
Funny.

I'm still at the stage of getting money out of the credit cards right now, and since I don't know my final BT amount, I haven't purchased any funds. Currently all the deposits are going into my Fidelity account (just the core MMF sweep). As of this moment the balance is $27,000. I will hopefully be able to deposit around $40k from Chase today or tomorrow.

However, of that balance only $7000 will clear if I write a check elsewhere. I actually had to wait until today before mailing a deposit to FNBO, just to make sure I don't bounce anything.

Admittedly, I am feeling kind of jittery about the market's prospects for the next year, so when I do finally invest those funds, it may be only a token percentage of the BT money (5-10%). But I'm still going to do it, dammit. For Science.

I'm also faxing paperwork to Citibank on my new Ultimate Savings account. I've got funding by credit card stuff here (my USAA card, $25k). That should have the benefit of eliminating the $13k credit balance on that card from other BTs, plus earn me some CashBack and get a month or so of float. I called usaa and asked them what my max purchase size was with this credit balance, and they said it was only my regular available credit line, not the credit line + the credit balance, so I wasn't able to open the account by funding $39k. Oh well.

My first AOR is documented in painful detail over here. But the utilization was such that individual lines were 95%, and global utilization was over 50%.

For this one, I don't have a TrueCredit subscription, since I can't get one for free. But I'll probably wait a little bit until I feel like my scores will be their lowest and subscribe for a month or two, just out of morbid curiosity. But few balances are appearing right now, so I need at least one month, maybe two.