I and another family member each applied for a Barclay card this week, both instantly approved. I thought I’d share our data points because they are at odds with conventional wisdom.
The 2 established “tips” we broke are:
- Only one Barclay application per 6 months.
- Keep at least one Barclay card (i.e. the relationship) open.
For tip #1, the family member who broke it got 3 Barclay cards in less than 7 months: one in early June, one in early August, and the one this week (late December) – all instant approvals.
For tip #2, I had closed all my Barclay cards as of November. I was approved for the new card today with the highest credit line I’ve ever received from Barclay. So, freeing up all my credit lines from Barclay seemed to help in my case.
This is just to show that the established Barclay application tips, and indeed many tips around the blogosphere, are not set in stone and quite YMMV. For what it’s worth, my family has been applying for Barclay cards at less than the recommended 6-months interval for years, with ~90% instant approval rate. We always reduce our credit lines across Barclay cards before applying, to about $2k per card and under $6k across all cards. We open plenty of cards throughout the year. YMMV.
There are two fantastic Barclay sign up boni right now: JetBlue Plus 60k (may end 12/31/17) and Aviator Red 60k. I’ve never had auto-approval for more than 1 Barclay card in a day, though reconsideration is possible.
Good luck.
I’ve never been able to get more than one co-branded card from Barclay. It doesn’t matter if the application is 3, 6, 12 months in between. As long as I have one open they won’t approve me for another citing too many new applications, enough credit extended or too many new card open. But if I close the one card and apply for another and they would approve it. As for their arrival cards I’ve never been able to get that at all
That’s rough. Does the existing card have high CL?