Here's my story: After reading up a bit on travelhacking, I decided to apply for a Chase Sapphire Visa Signature credit card, thinking I could do the minimum spend in the next 3 months, get the bonus points, then cancel the card before I have to pay the annual fee a year from now. I did this to great success with the Chase Visa Southwest Reward cards a couple of years back. I signed up for two cards they had that gave a huge number of Southwest miles upon signing, got the miles, kept one, and cancelled the other and rolled the credit line for the second onto the first. On the one I kept, I have of course always paid off my balance in full each month, so I've never paid interest or a late fee on the card, and I've earned more money in miles each year than the annual fee I pay, so they have only lost money on me over the time I've been their customer. I bring this up because after applying for the Chase Sapphire Visa last week, I got a notice from Chase Bank that they were denying me credit!
The letter read:
"Our decision was based on the following specific reasons:
--One or more revolving accts have a high balance compared to the credit line
--New mortgage opened in the past two years
--Recent requests for new credit
--Too many credit cards with balances greater than $1000"
None of these reasons are true. I have two credit card accounts, one of which (my Amex) was carrying ~2% of its credit line, and the other (the Chase Visa) was carrying ~10%. I'm a renter and have no mortgage, new or otherwise. The last time I made a request for new credit was a year and 10 months ago, when I applied for the second of my two Southwest cards, and neither of my credit cards had a balance of greater than $1000. I check my credit rating regularly on CreditKarma, and according to them, my credit score is 782, but according to the letter I received, based on Chase Bank's "Card Acquisition Risk Score," my credit rating is 624! Since you can check your credit report for free when you are denied credit, I did so, and confirmed that everything on there is correct, so it's not an issue of a mistake on my credit report or something like that.
So here are my questions for you Mustachians:
1. Is there some reason that I might not be credit-worthy that I'm missing? Is this something I should be worried about? Should I have brought down my balances even lower or waited even longer before applying for the card?
2. Is it possible that they're just denying me credit because they have reason to believe I'm going to take the bonus points and run, and they won't make any money off of me? Have any of you ever heard of this happening?
3. If so, is there anything I can do about it? Am I just SOL on travelhacking using any Chase credit cards?
What do you all recommend I do?