Jevon90's 1st AOR (Update 4/4/08: A/A from Citi appearing )

Alright, for better or worse, I did a Mini Biz O Rama of 10 Apps today. I found out my Experian was frozen this morning and all my non Exp Inqs had been bumped off earlier in the week so I thought it was the right time to try a few more apps that wouldn't add any new accounts to my credit report.
Here are the Results:
1. CitiBusiness PremierPass, (1P -> 15K TYP, 12/$0 ,$75 annual fee waived 1st year) Deferred, Approved, $4,000 CL
2. Bank Atlantic Rewards Business(Juniper), (15/$75) Deferred, Rejected, Sufficient Credit already with Juniper
3. Starwood Preferred Guest Business AMEX, (CB $65, 1P -> 10k SPG,$45 annual fee waived 1st year) Not processed yet: App sent but they haven't checked my credit yet due to the Experian Freeze being in Effect. CSR told me this app was denied to reapply and lift the freeze to be able to apply for this card.
4. M&T Business (Elan), (6/$0)Instant Approval, $10,000 CL. I will attempt to CLI when asking about my BT after I get the card in 7-10 days.
5. Chase Business Cash Rewards, ($35 CS, 12/$99) Deferred, Rejected with reasons listed: "Outstanding Credit Obligations owed on Closed Accounts[i have no idea what this has to do with]; Total Credit Lines On Open Accounts Too Low; Insufficient History of Credit Information is Reported"
6. BoA Platinum Business, (9/$99) Deferred, Approved(called in to check status and talked to credit analyst which sped up the decision time it seems), $5,000 CL
7. Capital One® Visa® Business Platinum with Preferred No Hassle Miles,($60 CS,0% on purchases for 12 months)Instant Approval, $500 CL
8. Cambridge Trust (Elan), (6/$0) Instant Approval, $10,000 CL. I will attempt to CLI when asking about my BT after I get the card in 7-10 days.
9. National City Business Visa,(1P->5K Points, 6/$0?) Deferred(they say: "Under review - A Specialist will contact you)(update 3/17: was never contacted),Approved, $5,000 CL
10. Woodforest(Elan) (6/$0) Deferred, Declined I finally got a letter on 4/4/08 that said the Reason was -Already has maximum number of requested products, so I suspect there's a limit of either 2 Business Cards allowed all together or maybe just 2 applications within 60-90 days.
11. Wachovia Business Cardapplied 3/17/08 via phone Deferred, Rejected

So 3 Instant Approvals out of 10 apps and at least $20,000 of new Business Credit is good news to me so far. Thank you Elan. I applied for the 3rd one(Woodforest) just to see if I could push my luck and get another approval after the other 2 instants. No denials and I will need to contact AMEX to attempt to provide TU or EQ data to them and also will need to confirm details with a supervisor from Nat City it seems. I will update as further results come in.
Edit:
So Far I have $34.5K in New Business Credit and out of the 11 apps I have 6 Approvals, 1 Still deferred, 3 Rejections, 1 Not Considered due to EXP freeze as of 3/22/08

##..Approved Amount.....Adjusted...APR...Term.....BT Fee...BT Amount
01...........$4,000.......$1,000.......0%...12........0.......NDY(not done yet, but plan on reallocating to CitiBiz and BTing from there for now and then when that offer expires reallocating to this card)
02...........Rejected........................................................................
03...........Rejected........................................................................
04...........$10,000......$10,000...0%....6.........$0......$9,600(96% util for now and plan to pay off $101 before statement balance)
05...........Rejected........................................................................
06...........$5,000.................0%....9.........3%......NDY(not done yet, am waiting to receive a capped BT offer)
07...........$500..........................no BT promotional rate............................
08...........$10,000......$10,000.....0%....6.........$0......$9,600(96% util for now and plan to pay off $101 before statement balance)
09...........$5,000.................0%....6.........$0?.....$4,750(95% util)
10...........Rejected........................................................................
11...........Rejected........................................................................
Total........$34,500........$34,500...................$0(so far)...$19,200 so far (55.65% Utilization so far)

Total New Business Cards/Total New Business Credit:6 /$34,500

Looks like things are going well with you so far. I am getting ready for a business AOR in the next month or so as I cut my utilization on prexisting accounts etc. On National City I doubt they will call you. My business partner did this card on a very mini AOR and got 9K from them and they never called. Hopefully you get a few more approvals. the only think I worry about on my AOR is that Chase pulls Experian and so does Citi and I think BOA. I might have to go for the oddball cards or something otherwise I will get a bunch of experian hits again.

Rob

oops

markkundinger said: PolarDude said: On one AOR I applied for 7 Elan cards, and got a credit ninja who ended up declining all the apps.
Interesting to hear 2 instant approvals here. Maybe 2-4 is more of a sweet spot for them.
I probably wouldn't want to try more than two Elan cards myself.
Another wildcard is what if you apply for a US Bank card and Elan cards. Their operations seem pretty tight to me. Is that going to enrage a credit ninja?
Hmm, yeah I hope I didn't bite off too much with Elan and get the approvals canceled. Thanks for the contributions PolarDude and mark.

It seems AMEX has effectively declined the application (though no inquiry was ever made) as the CSR I talked to said the system automatically cancelled it since my Experian was frozen and according to him AMEX couldn't pull from another bureau, but I'm going to try and talk to another CSR to see if anything can be done.

I also wasn't able to apply for the Wachovia Biz CC yesterday as I tried to over the phone but couldn't get in contact with the agent that had contacted me, so hopefully I can reach them today and send that in. UPDATE: They say that they need the business to be at least 3 years old to be able to offer the business credit card.

So far the new credit inquiries are looking like this:
Inquiries
Creditor Name Date of inquiry Credit Bureau
WELLSFARGO 03/21/2008 Equifax
C SHWAB 03/21/2008 Equifax
CHASE 03/19/2008 TransUnion
FIA CSNA 03/17/2008 Equifax
FIRST USA 03/17/2008 Equifax
FUSA, NA 03/17/2008 Equifax
NCBK-NCCS 03/17/2008 TransUnion
WACHOVIA BAN 03/17/2008 TransUnion
PROCD/CBSD 03/16/2008 Equifax
CITI 03/16/2008 Equifax
CITI 03/16/2008 TransUnion
NCBK-NCCS 03/13/2008 TransUnion
CBUSA/CBSD 03/12/2008 Equifax
ELANFINSVC 03/12/2008 Equifax
FIA CSNA 03/12/2008 Equifax
CAP ONE 03/12/2008 Equifax
CHASE 03/12/2008 Equifax
CAP ONE 03/12/2008 TransUnion
BRCLYSBANKDE 03/12/2008 TransUnion

markkundinger said: Another wildcard is what if you apply for a US Bank card and Elan cards. Their operations seem pretty tight to me. Is that going to enrage a credit ninja?

edit: by "tight" i mean "tightly integrated", not "cheap".

I applied for US Bank Baylor and Elan Woodforest at the same time and had no problems. BUT, my wife applied for US Bank Linux Fund and Elan Cambridge and received a call questioning why she "needed so much credit." She has 2 Elan biz cards and 1 US Bank Baylor card. All 3 cards are 6 months old. The biz cards are paid off, but the Baylor card still has 69% util on it. Anyway, three days after the ninja call, a new Elan Cambridge card with a $15K CL arrives. Should be interesting to see what happens with the Linux app.

Updates:

3/16/08:
1.CLIs: Last night while precelebrating St. patty's day I fired off a few CLI requests from Citi and Nat City that involve hard inqs, and so far the only result I've seen is Citi Biz going up from 13.7K to 18K.

3/17/08:
2.I also got an email tonight saying my Citi Biz PremierPass was accepted and I called in Mon. morning to find out the CL is 4K and , so thank you Citicards.

3.I called in to find out I was approved for the Nat City Biz Card and BoA Biz Card and both with 5K CLs.

4. Got rejection letter from Chase Business Card Services. Reasons for their decision:
"Outstanding Credit Obligations owed on Closed Accounts[i have no idea what this has to do with]
Total Credit Lines On Open Accounts Too Low
Insufficient History of Credit Information is Reported"
I understand the second two but am baffled by the first.

3/18/08:
5. Got word of my new Cap One Biz card, $500. Woot!. Thank goodness I applied via CS to get the $60 check.

6. Received my Cambridge Trust Card. Will wait for the M&T Card and Woodforest decision to come in to attempt to CLI and reallocate most all credit(will keep other cards open) to one card before doing a BT.

3/19/08:
7. Checked BankAtlantic(juniper) Biz card and found I was declined for sufficient credit already with Juniper, seems they're being pretty stingy as I only have $2500 and that's on the personal side.
8. Received my M&T Biz Visa Card. Calling to CLR with Cambridge and hopefully CLI.
Will update further as results come in.

jevon90, what are you doing with all the BT money from the AOR? How are you investing it? Is there a thread where people that did AORs share their investment strategies?

Received my CitiBusiness Premier Pass(with 4K Cl) and reallocated 3K to my current CitiBusiness card. I will then do another BT on this CitiBiz card after it arrives.

Received my BoA Platinum Business Card(with 5K CL). I talked to a CSR that said I couldn't reallocate any credit from my personal BoA NEA card, nor could they cap a BT fee on the Business Card. They say all reallocations have to be from personal to personal or business to business.

I also initiated a BT from my Nat City Business Card to my Citi Pro card for $4,750(95% util) and it will be mailed to them so it will take 7-10 business days to arrive. On the plus side there was no BT fee on this 6 month 0% offer though.

So 2 days ago I initiated another $15,700 BT from my CitiBiz card to my Fidelity My Cash Checking account via ACH to use the extra CL I got from the CitiBiz PP and more CL reallocated from the personal side.
Still waiting on my 2 Elan BTs and Nat City Biz BT to hit my Citi Pro Card to BT those funds to my checking account.

Also I have a question for the FWF community, have others been able to link their National City Business Card on Yodlee. I thought I found the place to add the business card(since I use Account View to access it on National City's site), but that's not working. Any success by others?

Ok, I've got some Mild A/A with Citi to report.
So on Monday night, 3/31/08, ~midnight, the $23,950 in BTs from the 2 Elan Biz and 1 Nat City Biz cards showed up on my Citi Professional Account giving me a -$23,950 balance, so I initiated a BT directly into my Fidelity Checking account of 24,400(the neg. balance and 400 of my $1000 CL on the Citi Pro)in the early AM of 4/1/08. I then checked the status of the BT 4/2/08 and it said declined.
I immediately sent Citi a message via their account message system to ask why it was cancelled and later that day I got an email saying I had gotten a message from Citi so I should login and check it. However when I went to view messages it would give me an error message and a 1-800 number was provided, so I called it up on 4/3/08 and talked to a CSR asking why the BT was cancelled and then I was told the BT was cancelled b/c the account was recently closed due to info on a recent Equifax Credit pull and that a letter documenting why exactly would be sent via the mail, so I'll find that out next week assumedly, and that if any of the info on my CR was incorrect I could have resubmit it after that erroneous info was removed. I then inquired about my $23,950 negative balance to make sure I could still retrieve it and I was transferred to another CSR who helped get a check for that amount sent to me in 7-14 business days.

So at the moment it seems all my other Citi cards(personal and business) are fine, but I'm worried that this will start a domino pattern of other Citi(and potentially other issuers) cards to close. If so I was aware of this possibility and fully accepting if it does happen.
My Equifax CR only has 7 Inqs on it, which I'm working on removing so as soon as they're removed I'll ask that they check my credit out again and/or send other financial documents to hopefully convince them to reopen this account, though I was looking to close this account sometime b/t now and november and am only losing a $1,000 CL.
Even though this method of creating a negative balance worked for me on the exact same card 6 weeks ago, if I had to do this over I would have sent the BTs from Elan and Nat City to my Citi Business Card to pay off part of that 0% BT and Reinitiated a BT with that Citi Biz card, so no negative balance was ever created.

Anyways, I thought the members of FWF would like to know that apparently Citi has some increased sensitivity(i.e. it seems a credit ninja checks out your credit) to either large negative Credit Balances on their accounts and/or or when you request a BT (maybe requests for Credit Balance Refund too) for that balance.

Edit: I just went to check with my other Citi accounts, and it looks like my mTVU card has the same thing where I get an error when I try to read my messages online and my 2 Citi Business Accounts have messages on them saying "
This account has been converted to a new number or was closed at your request. To access information related to your new account, register the new number and access it with your same user ID and password. If you have any questions regarding your account, please contact our Customer Service Center.", so it looks likely they've closed all of these accounts, hopefully I can improve this situation either in full or partially by improving my Credit Report and providing financial documents. For now, I'm going to enjoy the weekend and look to approach this next week.
Lastly, should I still expect to be able to pay my bills for these citi cards via Citi's Online Payment system?
Thanks for any help.

Interesting. I will be very careful processing my upcoming expected balance transfers. I had a feeling these huge credit balances would catch up with us eventually. Even though it isnt sketchy, it may very wall call attention to the balance transfer shenanigans and the unusual card usage - clearly it takes an exceptional user to generate continual massive overpayments to a credit card. One time may pass - but I'd be hesistant to recommend continued usage and this A/A seems to back that up.

This is bad news! I am sorry you got dinged, but thanks for the heads up.

I have a negative (meaning no AA yet) data point that may (or may not) be helpful.

Three weeks ago I got citi to send a check for 28k on my Business TY card (promotional BT offer, CL on card is 29.7k). 10 days later I paid off 12k via a Discover business card BT. Four days after that I requested another check from citi (this one for 12k). I have not received the last check yet (its not overdue) and this most recent BT is listed as approved on the web site.

This doesn't mean much, but it suggests the possibility that the credit balance (rather than multiple BTs) may be the trigger.

Yeah, I reported that $4k threshold in my update last night. I thought that might be interesting to you and others following using the Citi credit balance method. It seems like that might have been the trigger that caused them to look into your credit profile a little closer...i.e. they probably wouldn't have even looked at your credit report again to see the new accounts if something didn't trigger them to look. Too bad you're going through this...hopefully 0 Inqs on EQ will sway them.

I noticed you held a negative balance of some $24k on your citi professional card when at the time it had a $1k credit limit.

Are you aware of whether or not your Citi professional cardmember agreement had a clause in its terms and conditions (or cardmembers agreement, or whatever they call their "fine print") something to the effect of "cardmember will not hold a negative balance in an amount exceeding the credit limit"?

I'm asking only because I recall reading such a clause in my Citi Home Rebate fine print (opened around 3/07; and I can look up the exact language from mine, if it might be helpful to you.) I wonder if failing to follow that was a trigger for your recent Citi A/A.

Anyhow, big thanks for keeping us posted on the latest news, despite it sometimes being negative.

jevon90 said: jakeru said: I noticed you held a negative balance of some $24k on your citi professional card when at the time it had a $1k credit limit.

Are you aware of whether or not your Citi professional cardmember agreement had a clause in its terms and conditions (or cardmembers agreement, or whatever they call their "fine print") something to the effect of "cardmember will not hold a negative balance in an amount exceeding the credit limit"?

I'm asking only because I recall reading such a clause in my Citi Home Rebate fine print (opened around 3/07; and I can look up the exact language from mine, if it might be helpful to you.) I wonder if failing to follow that was a trigger for your recent Citi A/A.

Anyhow, big thanks for keeping us posted on the latest news, despite it sometimes being negative.

I'll look at the T&C later to double check, but I had succesfully pushed a $19,200 neg balance through in February, so i don't think that clause was mentioned but I would try to avoid these neg. balances in the future anyways.

Also another mini update. I called Citi to see how to initiate the reevaluation process. Here's how the CSR heirarchy worked as best as I could tell:
Called back of Citi Pro card 1-866 number and pressed 2 for Rep....explained situation and got transferred to another CSR who was an Account Specialist, but who had difficulty seeing all my accounts ...so I was transferred over to a Credit Management Specialist who could see all of my accounts and who was very friendly. She explained that she would initiate the reevaluation process but she didn't seem to a part of the decision as my accounts would be put under Review for Account Reopening to be done by some other specialist(s), but she said that it would take 7-8 days and the decision would be sent via mail(will then take another 7 or so biz days) but she also gave me a 1-888 number to call at the end of the next week to hear the decision before that. Also another important point was that it sounded like I had to clarify that I wanted all 4 of my closed accounts to be reconsidered for reopening or else it would have probably just have been the Citi Pro card(according to an aside fromt the Credit Management Specialist) that I initially called in about, so I would be sure to verbalize that with your CSR if you want multiple accounts reopened.

Additionally, as another datapoint my other Citi Professional Card in which I'm an Authorized User on my mother's account is still up and running and hasn't had the 27.75K CL reduced. This probably isn't too surprising since I'm sure her CR is better than mine and not ridden with new accounts/inqs.

Thanks for this information. I was not aware that there was an explicit re-evaluation process for this at Citi. I will be calling tomorrow.

Yeah, but I didn't see a number on my letter, other than for Equifax to get my free credit report.

Interesting, I did get my 15K TYPs from my new Citi Biz PP for my $.96 purchase of copies at kinkos so looks like ThankYouNetwork account is still working smoothly. Woot!