Cashmonkey's cautious AOR

Finally received a letter from Barclays regarding Juniper credit line decrease.
Interesting excerpt:

We have recently reviewed your account history. As a result of our findings, we requested additional information about your credit from an independent customer credit-reporting agency. Unfortunately, due to the following reasons, we have decreased your credit line to $13,350.00 effective immediately:

Growth Rate Of Overall Debt Is Too High
Recent Increase In Use Of Revolving Credit

This implies that they wouldn't have pulled my report if my balance wasn't high, as I have no other account history to speak of.

One odd note: the letter says they pulled TU for this, and maybe they did (I can't see softs).
Makes me wonder why they also pulled EQ, hard, twice...

GOSH, reduction from $15,000 to $300 is more than "minor." Do you have others to cancel it? From what I understand after a reduction it will take many months to get a reasonable CLI.

cashmonkey said: Update:

Minor adverse action from Juniper, as seen by many others:
They reduced my $15k line to $300 above my current $13k balance.
I haven't received any letters or anything, just noticed it through Yodlee.

Thankfully they did this after the statement posted, so my credit reports don't show 98% utilization on this line.
I guess I'll pay down to 89%.. and then they'll probably repeat the process. Oh well.


In other news, I've bumped off all my TU inquiries with PM123 and CreditKarma.
Especially happy about this since Citi pulls TU for me and they've been very inquiry sensitive lately.

edit: added links

Barklays/Juniper pulled TU on the app date, and then TU and EQ two weeks after. What really pissed me off is that the last two pulls were done AFTER they declined my application.

A word of warning about Experian security freezes:
I tried to place a freeze online, which first asks for personal information, then for credit card info, then for identification verification. After the third step, I received an error message ("We cannot honor your request.."), so I tried several times, using variations of my previous addresses. Each time failed.

I now have five $10 charges from Experian on my debit card statement.
(I figured hey, I'll use this to fulfill my rewards checking requirements!)

Speaking with a real person at Experian is nigh on impossible.
Their credit monitoring service people say this charge came directly from the bureau and they don't have any direct numbers.
Their corporate numbers have horrible secretaries who won't even listen to a complete sentence before transferring you off.

So now I'm disputing through my credit union, which will involve a detailed, notarized letter.. fun fun fun.

Edit: There is a way to reach a helpful human at Experian!
Call the number on your credit report. You will probably need to have a recent report (they ask for the report number), but in my case, the phone number was 800 493 1058.

I was able to place the security freeze over the phone (by paying another $10, yay, this time on a credit card).
They told me I will receive a PIN for unlocking/removing the freeze by mail in a few days.

To get the $50 refunded, they request that I send my bank statement, name, address, SSN, drivers license and utility bill copy to their refund department. In case anyone else runs into this, the refund department address is PO Box 881, Allen TX 75013

A "funny" thing about US Bank, in my case, was that the credit line showed up a few days after I activated the card (and automatically initiated the BT out), kinda nasty because it shows a balance of $19.5 on a $20.5 CL (it was me who asked for a $19.5 BT). I surely hope that the BT will soon reach the destination card.
How much time did it take for your BT from US Bank to reach the destination card?

I applied on 2/24 with $17k BT request to BofA, was approved on 2/28, and the BT posted on my BofA account on 3/10.

cashmonkey said: Called yesterday (Sunday) to consolidate an older BofA line onto my NEA card in preparation for an additional 0% BT. The CSR seemed competent.

Haven't you BT's enough already? I thought were already at 120K revolving debt, which is already way higher than your annual income.

cashmonkey said: With payments I'm now down to about 115k, and I'm planning to get another 10k from BofA soon.

I have yet to see any evidence for debt-to-income ratios being the initial cause of adverse action. Perhaps the models aren't sophisticated enough or they don't integrate credit report updates with initial application information. But hey, if they flag me, I'll let you know.

Ok, so maybe I overdid it on the warnings of not showing too much card debt relative to your annual income. Yet, we've seen recent adverse action against people who went up over 50%, and so far you barley got dinged going over 100%. Maybe utilization is a better measure.

I personally just balance transferred $28,000 which I still could have had on 0% for 7 more months because I was concerned I would go over 50% of my annual income in card debt. I was probably being too cautious.

No, the rep was just trying to hit his quota for BT deals. The department that does account reviews and adverse action is totally seperate.

However, in my opinion, you can't do an AOR without breaking a few eggs. You just have to keep the breakage manageable.

markkundinger said: No, the rep was just trying to hit his quota for BT deals. The department that does account reviews and adverse action is totally seperate.

However, in my opinion, you can't do an AOR without breaking a few eggs. You just have to keep the breakage manageable.

Thanks, I see the light now. Getting a credit limit reduced or an account closed wouldn't be the end of the world if I made an extra thousand dollars or so in profit.

Another Bank of America rep told me the National Education Association card has a special agreement with the NEA. BofA is not allowed to charge punitive rates, must cap all balance transfer fees at $30, and has a maximum rate of (prime?) plus 2% (now 7.99%). Forever.

Get this card!

Update:

My TC FAKOs have stabilized (bottomed out) at:
TU: 660 EX: 660 EQ: 684

Oddly enough, the major drop in TU and EX happened after I consolidated my 4-year old BofA card into my new NEA card.
During the two months prior to that, with all A0R balances reporting, my FAKOs were:
TU: 753 EX: 725 EQ: 684

The only other changes were small decreases in balances consistent with minimum payments, with no big thresholds crossed.
At the same time, my EQ report updated with the same, correct information, and that score didn't change!

May Wa Mu FICO from EX was 636.
June Wa Mu FICO from TU is 667.

Conclusion: FAKO algorithm is flawed, my scores were caught in a bubble, and I popped it by closing an account.

I have noticed some credit reporting oddities with BOA recently... (for the last 2-3 months). Previously, they would report each of my credit card accounts to all three CRAs each month like clockwork (shortly after closing statement.) Hoever more recently they have been missing or delaying some reporting, it seems.

I was originally thinking it had something to do with a reallocation or due date change request, but the reporting oddities have persisted and spanning across multiple (I have three) BoA accounts I think it may be more of a general reporting method change. One thought I had was maybe they are cutting back on reporting to reduce costs (thinking they are paying some costs each time they send an update to a CRA.)

Other changes I noticed with my BoA cards that may be associated with the credit reporting consistency change is, I used to have to access my two "newer" NEA cards on my WA-state (dumbed-down) online banking login. My "enhanced" (AZ state) login would access my old, formerly-MBNA card (with lots of nice features such as transaction details, online CLI, the nice billpay choice system, etc). Well I just noticed earlier this week that now all three of my BoA cards are now accessible through the AZ state BoA login! (With the nice features) Interestingly, I can still see the two newer NEA accounts in my WA state BoA login. Those accounts can be viewed now from both WA-state and AZ-state login.

It is worth noting that recently I transferred some worldpoints from one card to another and performed a worldpoints redemption. Another possibile explanation for the change is BoA's recent changes to billpay's "terms of conditions".

PS - my rationale as to why I ever got an AZ-state BoA login in the first place (as I have never lived there, etc) is that AZ must be where MBNA was based out of, so when I opened my MBNA card it was issued to me under an AZ state jurisdiction, and that association has remained even post-BoA merger.

jakeru said:more recently they have been missing or delaying some reporting, it seems

I have noticed this with BofA too.

I think your theory (cost cutting) is most likely correct. I can't think of any other logical reason for it.

Update:

Deposited a $9k BT check ($30 fee) from my NEA account to get back up to 50% overall utilization.

1 TU hard inquiry (out of 3) reappeared on 7/4 after TU chopped the TU-branded credit report services' inquiries.
Checking my soft pulls, most of my TC and PM123 pulls are gone but all my Credit Karma and Chase ID Protect pulls are still there.

And that's a good thing: after a couple more TC and CK pulls, the restored inquiry just fell off again on 7/5!

Don't pay it down yet. Chase will just cut again in 3 months.

You know, I've traditionally felt that this AA with Chase is inevitable. It probably is. HOWEVER, my most recent conversation with a credit ninja there makes me think that MAYBE you can talk your way out of further AA, perhaps by documenting assets. You might not get the CL restored, but there's a chance it might inoculate against further AA for a while. Or Chase might just tell you to pound sand.

Two ways to talk to a ninja:

1) Call the number when you get your adverse action letter (you will). Say "hey yo, give me my CL back".2

2) Call regular CSRs and ask to reallocate a small amount of credit between your two cards. The regular CSR won't be able to do it because you're on the "ninja blacklist" now. And you'll be transferred to a ninja.

Either way, you'll probably get a brief interview about your life, increasing debt, plans to pay cards, etc. I recommend being fairly upfront about it "I got several cards with 0% interest. I maxed out the cards. The money's sitting in the bank. I'm going to pay you off when the 0% ends, would you like to see bank statements?". And see what happens. I'm going to try it with my next Chase AA, but that's not scheduled for six months or so.

Thanks for the post, markkundinger. I don't want a 98% utilized card showing up on my CRs, but the CL reduction happened right after a statement cycle, so hopefully the new info won't post for a while. I'll try calling Chase when I get the letter and I'll post results here.

Regarding the NEA card, while it does nominally require NEA membership, FIA (the administering bank, a.k.a. BofA) has not checked this in the past. I doubt there's any benefit to be gained from applying for multiple NEA cards, as they're all administered by FIA and the credit lines probably come from the same bucket. I had to reallocate from other BofA cards to open an NEA card, so in my case, applying for 2 NEA cards certainly wouldn't have helped.

Called Chase, gave my employment and HHI info to the guy who answered the phone and then was transferred to a ninja.
Without asking any more questions, she put me on hold and reviewed my account.
She then came back on the line and said that unfortunately they can't help for the reasons mentioned above.

I volunteered that yeah, all that money is 0% transfers sitting in a bank account and I can pay it off any time, but she didn't really care:
"That is part of your credit history and it is a big risk for the bank."
"So you don't care if I can pay it off?"
"We do care, and if anything changes, please call back and we can review your account again."

I thanked her for her time, and she hung up on me without another word.