Citi has always had strict rules on how many credit cards you could be approved for. Previously these rules have been as follows (in addition to the one bonus per family of cards per 24 months):
- You can only apply for one Citi personal card every 8 days
- You can apply for no more than two Citi personal cards every 65 days
- You can apply for one Citi business card every 95 days
There has been a few threads on reddit (1, 2, 3) that there is a new rule and that you’re limited to one personal card per 60 day period. According to what I’ve read, this excludes targeted/mailed offers and started at or around August 27th, 2016 (this is also when the new rule regarding one bonus per family of cards went into place).
I asked for datapoints on Twitter and only had readers confirming their experience:
@Drofcredit my parents and I have been denied recently for the same reason. Analyst said new rule. No more than 1 app in 60 days.
— Vee Jay (@veejangl) November 14, 2016
Other datapoints agreeing with rule:
Datapoints disagreeing with rule:
My Thoughts
I have no idea if this is a new rule or not, I always think it’s suspicious when representatives mention specific time frames (e.g 60 days in this case) as it usually means that it’s a hard coded rule they can’t override. I don’t think it really matters that much anymore either as you’re limited to one bonus per family of cards per 24 months.
Also got the 60 day answer from reconsideration.
And another denial. First was due to within 60 days of last Citi card application, second was due to within 60 days of last denial. First reconsideration agent told me to apply 60 days after the original application but this time they said that should have been 60 days after that denial.
We’ll see in another 60 days.
4 HPs for this single card but Citi will reconsider that as one. However other banks might not.
I was just denied on a TY Premier explicitly for having applications within the past 60d. Agent was surprised and never saw 60d listed in her system before. I asked if 60 was a magic number and she said as far as she knows, there’s some context to the rules. I had applied for a personal and business AA (50k+$200cr, then SMed +20kAA on each) approx one month ago (both on the same day). She told me that I should definitely wait at least 30d more before trying to apply again.
@Maddi – I applied for Citi Prestige. Same problem.
Do we have data points for cards other than Hilton Honors? Those are the cards that I was denied for on 2 different accounts.
I recently applied for a Citi Hhonors Reserve and was denied. 800 credit score, $160k income, currently 4 citi cards with $50k total credit limit, also citi checking. I thought initially that I might have fell victim to this new rule, but then I realized it’s been about 75 days since my last new Citi card. I did recently PC my Citi Dividend to a double cash card, could this possibly count against the new rule? I will call recon line when I get the dreaded denial letter in the mail.
Could you have hit your max credit limit with Citi?
I was denied under this rule when trying to beat the new family rule implementation to get the no fee Hilton when I had applied for the reserve about 40 days earlier. My denial letter said verification issues curiously, but I was told by 2 different reps after HUCA that it was a 60 day rule, so I chalk the letter up to well known Citi IT incompetence
what does “excluding targeted” offers exactly means??
if i have 1 targeted offer in the mail for card A…..
does that mean i can apply for card A and for any other citi card and be approved?
or i need to have 2 targeted offers and only that way i can get 2 cards?
I think it means that if your second offer is targeted it’ll bypass this rule, but it’ll still be counted if it’s your first app. But I’m still trying to work this out.
I’ve been talking about this for a month since we got denied for this reason. Also provided a DP on twitter.
Thanks, Naomi!
you are 2.5 months late doc
Like I said, it doesn’t really matter with the new family rule. If you knew about it 2.5 months ago, why didn’t you let me know?
i wonder if Citi will start hurting from all these rules… their cards are just not fun any more.
I think Citi got burned the last few years (100k AA, W>WE loophole, 50k AA/40k TYP Citigold, $100k CC funding, etc…) and they’ve taken a knee jerk approach. I see almost no value from Citi these days.
The category bonuses used to be industry leading, but now Chase has completely upstaged them in that department.
Citi ‘Offers For You’ appears to have been started with the aim of competing with Amex Offers, but it’s fallen completely flat and is rarely refreshed with new deals.
Sign up bonuses are nearly non-existent nowadays with new rules surrounding once per card family, 24 month language, and targeted mailers becoming more and more hit or miss.
Unless you have a reliable way of executing targeting mailers successfully, I would move on from Citi after grabbing 50k Prestige, 60k AA Personal, and 50k AA Biz.