This weekend I have completed the app-o-Ramas for me and the wife with weird results. My FICO score before the AOR was 816, and hers was 796.

Here are the results.

Lazy Traveler:

Mrs. Lazy Traveler:

App-o-Ramas, AKA credit card churning, are still my primary method of accumulating various travel currency in order to Travel Free. I love app-o-Ramas! App-o-Ramas are easy, safe (when you know what you are doing), and they add hundreds of thousands of points to your treasure chest just in a matter of minutes.

So, while the results of my app-o-Rama are not exactly a failure, they are a little discouraging, or, in the very least, weird. Let me give you a little context so you understand what I mean.

During my previous app-o-Rama I received a denial from the Capital One Venture for too many applications. I called twice, but they wouldn’t budge. Since I had this feeling that the third call wouldn’t change that predisposition, I made another call: I called it a day.

However, since Cap One kept sending me that targeted application for the business version of the card, I decided to try: $500 cash bonuses don’t really grow on a tree you know. I was fully expecting to get denied for that card, but to my surprise, I was approved immediately. Hurray!

My second application was the Barclaycard US Airways with the 10,000-mile renewal bonus. I’ve held two of these cards, although I closed one a few months back. I was expecting to get a delayed decision with the following denial–instead I was approved immediately.

So far so good, but this is when my lucky roll ended.

My app-o-Rama first hiccup: Chase Fiasco

I currently have 5 cards with Chase, including an Ink Plus. That is nothing. I once applied for a new card with seven–and got it on a reconsideration call.

I usually try to avoid applying for two cards from the same issuer, but this time around the pickings were slim. I applied for the Chase CSP and Chase British Airways cards, and at first, it seems that things were going my way. I received similar responses from both.

My app-o-Rama: Chase first “call to action”

My app-o-Rama: Chase second “call to action”

Listen, I know this language very well. In all my previous dealings with Chase this language had meant please call us, we’ll ask you a few questions, approve the card and send you on your way. This is why I was dumbfounded when the agent denied the card after putting me on hold several times, each time for 5-7 minutes. It went like this:

Chase gal: Is there a reason you have applied for so many cards in the last four months?

Me: I’ll have to travel a lot for work this year, so I am interested in the best travel credit cards on the market.

Chase: You already have a lot of credit with us.

Me: If you are concerned with the exposure, I don’t mind if you take the funds from my other accounts with Chase.

Chase: If that is the case, let me take a look at this possibility.

She puts me on yet another hold, and I’m browsing my emails waiting for the approval–not a care in the world, LOL. And then she comes back and says she won’t be able to approve me for either card.

I was so dumbfounded I had to ask her to repeat that again. Seriously! Unfortunately, she did.

Well, maybe it just wasn’t my day. Will call tomorrow.

My app-o-Rama second hiccup: strange approval from Citi 

I received a message to call them with a reference number. It was Saturday night, and the agent told me she had practically approved me, but she would have to get the signature from her supervisor–since I already had a lot of credit with them. When I suggested that she take the funds from another account, she pointed out I didn’t have another business account with Citi. She was right, of course.

So I called them today again. The agent put me on hold for about 10 minutes and finally approved me for a grand sum of $1,000. $1,000! No, I didn’t skip a zero.

One thousand dollars!

You know when was the last time I was approved for a lousy $1,000 credit line? When gas prices were slightly over a buck. When the dude in the White House said he had not had sex with that woman. When I had much more hair on my head. God, I am old!

Will closing a couple of Citi cards ease the pressure and make it easier to increase my credit line? I mean it’s not impossible to meet the $3K threshold with a $1,000 CL, but it’s definitely cruel and unusual. I have always tried to preserve my credit lines, even after I would close the account, but maybe it doesn’t work all the time. As you open more and more credit lines–yet your income doesn’t grow (or doesn’t grow as fast)–banks get nervous. Who can blame them?

There was also a delayed decision from BoA, which I expected as I had three other Alaska cards with them. I called but they didn’t have my records just yet.

Mrs. Lazy Travelers got most of her decisions delayed, which had always been the case before, as well. This time, though, I’m really concerned with her two Chase applications considering my own experience.

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