Several reports indicate that effective June 2009, Chase CSRs have been instructed to allow no line transfers from one credit card to another. That means no consolidations (closing old lines and moving the credit available to a new line), or reallocations (moving a portion of a one credit line to another.)

I find the number and similarity of the reports convincing. All the same, if anyone has seen anything in writing from Chase confirming, clarifying, or denying this news, please post it here.

I haven't seen anything current about so called "conversions" or "product trades"--for example, taking a Chase Freedom card and changing it to a Chase Bucksback card (with or without the same account number, but preserving the account and credit reporting history, and generally not requiring a new credit inquiry).

With line transfers out, the conversion tactic becomes all the more valuable to the extent it's available. Hence my question: what Chase product trades are still working for FWF members?.

TIA for including your data points, and any other reliable info you may have.

EDIT: Thanks in part to your data points, it appears that product trades are dead or dying also. A darn shame.

Interesting. I just moved $7K from one card to another and also converted a Freedom Plus to an Amazon.com to avoid the annual fee.

I might have just got in under the wire though. I believe it was the last week of May that I did this, possibly the first few days of June at the latest.

Damn it! I was gonna call for a couple weeks now to consolidate a couple cards. I'll call tonight for sure and report back

Because of the Wamu merger, I now have five Chase cards, none of which I used regularly. When they refused to close my wamu cards and consolidate them with the existing Chase rewards card, I decided to charge $20 on each of them every month and make daily $1 payments though my Wachovia free-checking w/way-2-save account. It gets pretty tedious and time consuming to keep track of everything, but I like how quickly my 5% savings account is adding up. Thanks Chase.

Closed and consolidated the line on my Sony card last week. Less than $5,000 though.

No problem for me since Chase kneecaps my lines everytime after I do an AOR anyway.

I have a 7K line carried over from Wamu that I was going to CLR to my AOR card (which keeps getting cut to 99% UTIL), but didn't because I was afraid they'd just cut it anyway... but the odd thing is that if I use the Citi ID monitor credit simulator, even if I leave the Wamu card open with a low CL, and bump up the limit with the card on the balance, my simulated score decreased. Not really sure why, or if that would be the case out of the "lab", but it gave me enough reason not to try it.

My guess would be to NOT close cards before applying for new ones... since perhaps they will act like Discover and while they won't CLR, they may reconsider limits on new cards if you are willing to reduce other lines. That's just speculation though.

We are pretty much left with Barclays, US Bank (elan), BOA and National City as relatively BT friendly lenders. AMEX, Discover, Citi, Chase, Wamu es morte.

I just tried to reallocate from the freedom card, the CSR that picked up happened to be a supervisor and told me right away that they no longer consolidate or reallocate, and if I want a CLI on any card they'll do a credit pull.

Edit: I also called the Amazon number in hopes it was card-dependent, but the Indian CSR told me they've put all consolidations on hold.

redina said:IIRC, I saw someone say BofA also isn't very friendly toward consolidation. Reallocation had mixed reports...

After I consolidated my Chase Sony card I called BofA to close and consolidate an unused card (a card that I had actually requested cancelled over a year ago). Upon that request I was asked to provide all current income and asset info. They then promptly informed me my total credit line (over all cards with them) would be cut from ~$80,000 to $5,000. So yeah, not very friendly. They're obviously looking for any way to reevaluate their credit customers using much, much more stringent guidelines.

Today from a Chase rep was kind enough to inform me that a recent internal memo did indeed instruct them as follows: "Customers with multiple credit cards can no longer combine them into one card with a higher limit." Which suggests that consolidation is out for sure, and probably reallocation too.

The same source indicated that they'd not been authorized to do product trades for "months" now.

Of course it's always possible that managers have the authority to override these guidelines in certain situations. But generally speaking, it doesn't look promising.

Thanks to everyone for sharing your data points & related info.

DaveHanson said:Today from a Chase rep was kind enough to inform me that a recent internal memo did indeed instruct them as follows: "Customers with multiple credit cards can no longer combine them into one card with a higher limit." Which suggests that consolidation is out for sure, and probably reallocation too.
.Sounds like Chase is trying to avoid people creating higher CLs than given, which makes sense.

But if you already have a 35k limit on card A, and just want to move that limit to Card B (because you prefer using card B and its benefits or whatever) it might still be possible.

The last datapoint I have is earlier this year, prior to June. They had no problem reallocating portions of several lines to create a large line, which we then proceeded to use for a capped fee 0% offer