teammjs said:How fast did they close after your AOR, and how many cards did you apply for before your last Citi one (which they presumably could have seen the inquiries on)?

My wife had two new personal cards closed, two old cards closed (sadly, the 0% for life with 2 purchases/month), but they didn't touch the new business card or her old Professional card. I'm speculating that a hard pull citi initiated on us when we wanted to open a MMA about 20 days after the AOR may have picked up all the activity, rather than fallout from the initial hard pulls (which were early in the AOR order).

On the 0% for life, they never even sent a letter-- only found out about it when the card wouldn't work and the online account services wouldn't allow more than basic functions. And on one of the new cards, they cancelled the card and cancelled the BT check 7 days after it was deposited in the checking account! So, you have you watch carefully.

I just did a major AOR, and am planning to freeze EQ and EX (which Citi tends to pull) to try to protect against a rogue credit request after the 1st 3 days have gone by just in case. I don't believe they can see queries on their routine soft pulls, correct?

The order of applications was specified in my AOR thread. I'll edit the OP with a link to that thread in a minute.
I had, I think, 13 new inquiries on Experian. The Citi cards were all grouped towards the front of the the list, except for the Citi professional card which was the last card I applied for due to some issues getting the application to work. This card was rejected by email rather quickly, if I recall correctly. I was ultimately approved for 5 cards, 2 of which were business cards. I actually have not yet confirmed that all of my accounts have been zapped, which is what I was told was done, since I havent concluded how best to do so - I may just try to connect to one of the automated account status lines and confirm each card.

In any event, the accounts were closed about 2 days after I called in to enable them. I believe I received the cards a couple of days before that (was out of town when they arrived). I had started using my Premier Pass Elite card and racked up about 700 in charges in those 2 days. All of the other accounts, other than my original three that I previous had, were virgin accounts. Nothing like getting rejections on 2 straight credit cards standing on line at the post office to send out my taxes. LOL!

stook2001 said:That being said, you should be careful with Citi, check out the last few days of posts on the Adverse action thread. There has been similar action taken with MUCH more subtle activity than mine.

I applied for 2 Citi Cards in my Mini App-O-Rama 2 weeks ago. Citi gave me $75k in credit limits between 2 new cards. I took out $43k out of 0% money with no adverse action at all. I think all we are seeing is card issuers getting more conservative like DaveHanson stated.

If you are a qualified borrower you are not going to have an issue. People on the fringes or playing games with issuers tho are going to have problems if there accounts get reviewed. Issuers are not stupid if you live in cheap area or have an college address and you have hyundai card loan and put down a household income of $300k they going to think you are lying. On the flip if you live with your parents in an upscale area they might be more likely to believe you earn that kinda of income.

teammjs said:
I just did a major AOR, and am planning to freeze EQ and EX (which Citi tends to pull) to try to protect against a rogue credit request after the 1st 3 days have gone by just in case.

I'm really surprised at what I've seen in this thread about Citi pulling EX. I have 5 pulls from CITI in the last 2 years showing on my credit report - every one is TU. Could this vary by state? I'm in CA.

AAlison said:
I'm really surprised at what I've seen in this thread about Citi pulling EX. I have 5 pulls from CITI in the last 2 years showing on my credit report - every one is TU. Could this vary by state? I'm in CA.
Pulls often vary by state. Recommend you check out the Creditpulls database over on creditboards.com. Useful info.

ifyouhavetoask said:stook2001 said: I live in one of the more wealthy parts of Dallas. I can easily document my HHI as well as liquid cash and net worth, etc. I was told that they didn't care about any such things and that they were making decisions purely on the basis of inquiry activity. This seems like an awfully ham handed approach since access to credit alone isn't really what Citi should be concerned with. I agree with your general comment. Was I too aggressive with Citi, surely yes. However, I can easily back up my qualifications for the total credit I have as well as the credit extended specifically by Citi. We'll see how they respond. Despite the chest pounding (wealthy part of Dallas, liquid cash and net worth, etc.) you have to use some common sense here.

People who actually have the things you claim to have, don't usually waste their time chasing a few grand in credit card balance transfer money (or posting about it all day on the internet). Why? Because they're too busy earning a high HHI, and protecting their assets. Citi knows this, and that's why they closed your accounts.

All the bragging in the world doesn't change that. In fact, it further reinforces the reasons why Citi closed the accounts. You're presenting yourself to be something that doesn't make sense, and Citi sees it for what it is.

Not meant to be a personal attack on you. Instead, it's just an observation. Maybe one that will help you get your Citi accounts reopened... if you get my drift.

Point taken, however - 8-10k is 8-10k. You make more money by making more money. That can be done with my W2 day job and/or it can be done with leveraging arb investing with the bank's money. All of this is relatively irrelevent since I have frankly never even done a balance transfer. Ever. There is no chest banging or bragging whatsoever. I was responding to Dolmar's point about relative credit worthyness. Frankly, my situation is the easiest case imaginable since the vast majority of my income is W2 income that can be substantiated with tax returns and current pay stubs. As I have already explained (as have others in the adverse action thread), the actions taken by Citi are being justified by inquiries ONLY. They don't care to understand your financial situation and instead extrapolate credit seeking with extreme risk - it is my view that this is an overly simplistic way of dealing with their issue.

stook2001 said:ifyouhavetoask said:stook2001 said: I live in one of the more wealthy parts of Dallas. I can easily document my HHI as well as liquid cash and net worth, etc. I was told that they didn't care about any such things and that they were making decisions purely on the basis of inquiry activity. This seems like an awfully ham handed approach since access to credit alone isn't really what Citi should be concerned with. I agree with your general comment. Was I too aggressive with Citi, surely yes. However, I can easily back up my qualifications for the total credit I have as well as the credit extended specifically by Citi. We'll see how they respond. Despite the chest pounding (wealthy part of Dallas, liquid cash and net worth, etc.) you have to use some common sense here.

People who actually have the things you claim to have, don't usually waste their time chasing a few grand in credit card balance transfer money (or posting about it all day on the internet). Why? Because they're too busy earning a high HHI, and protecting their assets. Citi knows this, and that's why they closed your accounts.

All the bragging in the world doesn't change that. In fact, it further reinforces the reasons why Citi closed the accounts. You're presenting yourself to be something that doesn't make sense, and Citi sees it for what it is.

Not meant to be a personal attack on you. Instead, it's just an observation. Maybe one that will help you get your Citi accounts reopened... if you get my drift.

Point taken, however - 8-10k is 8-10k. You make more money by making more money. That can be done with my W2 day job and/or it can be done with leveraging arb investing with the bank's money. All of this is relatively irrelevent since I have frankly never even done a balance transfer. Ever. There is no chest banging or bragging whatsoever. I was responding to Dolmar's point about relative credit worthyness. Frankly, my situation is the easiest case imaginable since the vast majority of my income is W2 income that can be substantiated with tax returns and current pay stubs. As I have already explained (as have others in the adverse action thread), the actions taken by Citi are being justified by inquiries ONLY. They don't care to understand your financial situation and instead extrapolate credit seeking with extreme risk - it is my view that this is an overly simplistic way of dealing with their issue.

Trolls don't need answers. Just ignore it.

Sorry if I missed this... But I assume your cards were closed before you could do the BT right? B/c oherwise, if you got the BT out, it isn't such a big deal b/c you shouldn't have to pay back the funds early (you just can't do more transactions).

stook2001 said:curtisekarr said:ifyouhavetoask said:stook2001 said:
I think that where you live, your Net Worth, liquid cash and HHI do not show up on Credit Reports which the credit analysts review (yes they have your HHI from your initial app). My point is that the OP stated that the reason given was the high number of recent inquiries. Even very wealthy people with High HHI and good credit scores might try to rapidly increase their available credit in order to go on a spending spree and potentially screw the CC companies.

These guys are paid to detect suspicious, questionable behavior which might negatively impact their bottom line. It's that simple. No reasonable consumer needs 15-20 new cards. If your total outstanding debt rises from $1,237 to $89,300 in two months, then any prudent analyst is going to examine that VERY closely. Particularly in today's tight-credit environment. My advice is to lay low for awhile, and watch the utilization.

Sure - and a this is also how banks earn money from consumers - by extending credit and allowing consumers to use it. They do soft pulls monthly. Is there higher risk for me today than last month, sure. Enough to cancel all credit, I personally think no. Not to mention, Credit Analysts can ask for whatever they want when evaluating consumer credit lines (ie. AMEX). My whole point was that the method being used is too extreme and poorly thought out. As much as we may dislike it, the AMEX Financial Review makes FAR more sense. Would I understand if they left all accounts open and reduced credit lines, sure. But end the credit relationship fully? Seems extraordinary. Looks, its not the end of the world. I dont HAVE to use Citi credit.

By the way, your address does show on your credit report.

Believe it or not the CC companies do not appreciate we A0R-types. And can you blame them? They make virtually no money on us, and give us extravagant amounts of $ to invest in HYS for a year, at which time we re-pay them so as to avoid even one day's interest charge. So they risk $1,000s in order to make $0. So analysts are paid to detect our sorry arses and weed us out of their system. They don't care if it's fair, or too extreme or if we like it.

Citibank's Credit Management Department (the dept that closes credit card accounts) does not care about anything except what they put in the letter they send you. In my case, it was the same as the OP's. Too many inquiries. they did not care if I had $5M cash in the bank, they did not care if I had 100 credit cards... All they cared about were the # of inquiries on my report. They did not want to hear anything else...

He knows when you are sleeping... he knows when you're awake,
He knows when you've tried to trick the credit card companies by doing an AOR.

Therefore, the man doesn't care that your income is comparatively high and that you pay your balances in full. You are NOT using the cards as intended, you are trying to trick the man out of his hard earned cash, and the Man is taking his cards and going home with them.

In other words, this is the price you pay for being caught doing something that the Credit Card Companies don't favor.

You are a perfect example of why it is better to build your credit honestly, rather than applying "all at once." Ask for huge increases, document your assets and get half of what you ask for. Then do it again in six months.

Alternatively, risk having your cards canceled. And not just the ones you applied for in the AOR.

Of course, plenty of people get away with the AOR and make a killing doing it. But they do so knowing what the risks are. Or, maybe they don't all know the risks. In any event, anybody reading this thread is now, again, aware of the risks.