Tell me Credit Card offer won't the credit limit ?
Tell me Credit Card offer won't the credit limit ?
I keep getting these credit cards offers and some of them do have
attractive and useful (to me) terms.
However, none of them ever states exactly what my credit limit is
going to be.
All they say is: "generous credit line"; "attractive credit line";
"credit limit to meet all your needs", blah, blah and blah.
I don't want to go ahead and apply and be stuck with a credit line of
$200 or so.
If I have been 'pre-approved', why can't they tell me my credit limit
so that I can make a better decision of whether to accept the offer or
not?
What do you guys do usually?
- The problem is that they have not seen your credit report so
they don't know what they will give you. They just get some
rudimentary info from the credit bureau which says that you
probably quality for a card based on some info they searched on.
I suppose you could find a number for the bank and call them up
and ask them what they would offer you but they may tell you
that they can't tell until they look at your credit report, and
I assume this is what you are trying to avoid them doing unless
you know that you'll get a good credit limit.
You want a "useful" credit limit"? I applied for a new credit
card (from MBNA, it turns out) so my daughter could get a free
TY Beanie Baby (it's a TY credit card). They sent me the card
with a $17,600 credit limit! Certainly the largest I have ever
received and easily $17,000 more than I ever wanted on this
card. I have to call them and ask (no, tell) them to lower it to
something more reasonable.
- Pre-approved basically means that they got your name from a list. They
don't specify what your credit limit will be, because they don't know until
you apply and they run a real credit check. If you get the card and don't
like the credit limit, you can call them and ask them to raise it, but they
probably won't raise a credit limit until you have had the account for a
while and have some good payment history. OTOH, once you have a good
payment history, you will probably find that they will keep raising your
credit limit on a regular basis (and, in my case, I have to keep calling
them and asking them to lower it to what I consider reasonable -- too much
available credit can be bad when you apply for a loan)
- You've been "pre-approved" to get junk mail. If you search through
the fine print, odds are you'll see a statement that (when turned
into English) gives them an out to reject you.
Every such offer that I've bothered to read also has a disclaimer
somewhere, to the effect of "If we don't like your application or
the results of your credit check, we'll give you our 'B' card
instead of the one we're offering. That one has an annul fee and a
higher interest rate and a lower credit limit."
- I'm also looking to see if it truly is a credit card, and not some catalog
service trying to masquerade as one. I also am looking for statements that
guarantee that I will get the card, or they will refund fee #1. This, of
course, assumes that I will be comfortable with getting a card with a credit
limit that barely leaves me enough to charge the Sunday paper after fee #2.