Discover Miles – Almost immediate approval
As I was typing up yesterday’s BoA post, I had forgotten I wasn’t banned from Discover yet and so I decided to get a Miles card. This will be my second go-around with this card; I had cancelled the first one over a year ago. Also note that I have an IT card already. That card had a $30K CL or so because I was able to merge the CL’s a loooong time ago. It was a tough decision to drop the CL a few months ago, but I did it because I wanted to get a higher CL this time around (the first card only gave me a $3K CL.) So a few months ago, I dropped the $30K CL down to $5K.
Chat
After I submitted the app, a chat box opened up saying they needed more info. Over chat, I verified myself and then the rep asked me for my income, which I thought was odd SINCE I JUST SUBMITTED THAT 5 SECONDS AGO. After a few minutes though, I was approved for a $5K CL and the rep even mentioned that I would get my cashback doubled at the end of 12 months. Sorry I don’t have the screenshot (I probably should have saved it,) but I’m confident it’ll get doubled next year. I’ll call to double check once the card comes in though.
Others have also mentioned that if you do put a lot of spend on the card, then after 2-3 months, they’ll auto increase the CL on the card, so I’m hoping that’ll happen. I had tried to move CL back in the day, but it seems that the only time you can do that is if you call recon. Once you’ve been approved, it’s game over. So maybe I should have asked the chat rep to move some CL over when I had him on chat.
Also remember the card comes with a $30 annual credit for in flight WiFi or something. I wish I had that when I was on my Etihad flight.
Don’t forget 0% APR for 14 freakin months. That is the sweetest part of the deal for me. It’s also for this reason that I’m saving this card until 0% APR runs out on my Blue Plus. Hope I get a higher CL than 5k though.
I did see that, but high util will kill you. Plus, I’d by Tour de Francing on it anyway.
Noted….but personally I found that having +30% on one or two cards at a time when I have 30+ accounts and a total util rate of <3% doesn't really hurt me that bad. Still north of 800 due to all the other factors. But I can certainly see why some people would be hesitant.
I can concur with this, I routinely carry balances up to about 30% on an individual card (with 0% APR offers only, of course) and there seems to be no major impact to my credit score as long as I keep my total utilization across all cards to 5% or so (I can push it up closer to 10% if I really want to, but the score will typically drop a little more). The ideal number per card seems to be no more than 30%, if I go above that then I do tend to see a noticeable impact on my score pretty quickly. I’m sure if I paid everything off completely my score would probably go up maybe 10 to 20 points, but to me it seems like a good trade-off to be able to carry a $5000 to $10,000 balance for 12 to 15 months at 0% APR with only a very minor impact on my score. Put that $10,000+ away in a credit union offering from 3% to 4.59% (CCU) or in the stock market if you are more daring, and you could easily make an additional $300 to $500+ in 12 months off that “free” money. Just make sure you are meticulous in keeping track of all relevant dates and be damned sure you don’t go a day past the expiration of the 0% APR offer, or your rate will likely skyrocket to 20-something-percent and you’ll throw away a lot of your savings..
Mark my words – this won’t last another year. Imagine putting a million bucks through this only to be denied the year’s end double. Now count on that happening.
The CL is the bottleneck. No one’s getting that much to cycle anyway. Plus it’s been 2.5 years since the card came out, so if it was dead due to all the HH, it’d be dead already.
Just admit it… you know you’re going to cycle that $5k limit and you’ll be banned within 6 months, calling it now 🙂
Don’t be surprised when the ‘banned from discover’ post comes up later
that would be impressive. Don’t think I’ve seen anyone banned from Discover
That sounds like a challenge to me..
Am seriously considering getting this card for some tasty MS