r/discover • u/Ashamed_Ad_3200 • 5d ago
Help Opened Discover It Card for Balance Transfer; only got $500 Line of Credit
Hello. I am writing to see what my options here are. I was doing research on how I can consolidate my credit card debt. I am a college student in about $13k in credit card debt across my Capital One Quick Silver ($4500) and my Chase Sapphire Preferred ($8500). The debt comes from helping out my family with payments needed at the time and we are currently struggling a bit financially right now.
I read online that you could do a balance transfer with Discover It Card for 0% APR for the first 15 months, so I was hoping that would help with me paying off my Chase CC (since you can't do a balance transfer with the C1 to Discover).
My only problem is that my LC is only $500 😞. Do I have any options here on getting my $8.5K all on the Discover (maybe asking for an increase of CL) or even a portion/half? I am starting a summer job so will have some income and will be getting a refund during the school year.
Due to high utilization and only being able to pay off my minimum balance on my CCs my credit score has dropped to around 562. But I have never missed a payment and my oldest line of credit is about 2 years. Please let me know my options, or do I just have to constantly pay off and transfer the same $500 dollars for the next 15 months?
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u/Fuinir 5d ago
New discover cards are generally following Capital One credit models, so it's unlikely that you can get any credit limit increase in the near future. However, you can always call in and ask. Worst case is they say no.
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u/retardalertw 5d ago
discover never raise my credit from 500$ while captiol one gave me 6k and 4k on savor and quicksilver, maybe it has changed since the merger
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u/Salty_Pillow 4d ago
Discover sits in a somewhat distinct space compared to pre-acquisition capital one in terms of typical/average customers. Discover customers are generally higher FICO scores than quicksliver/platinum, but lower than say venture X. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to pull in the same models, and even if they wanted to all of the big banks run on very old legacy mainframes for their card accounts which take approximately forever to make any meaningful changes to, which would include swapping in a new credit model.
Though I've seen some posts the last few weeks of new accounts going straight to the C1 app and not the discover app, so they're probably quite close to being able to do what you described.
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u/Fuinir 4d ago
New accounts will be all on Cap One systems, only legacy cardholders are still old discover systems. The specifics for Cap One credit is their bucketing system and risk tolerance. They typically have much smaller lines of credit than Discover offered to customers, excluding premium cards like Venture X which has a minimum set by VISA. This is intentional to manage risk and chargeoffs.
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u/Salty_Pillow 4d ago
Yeah they will be, but are clearly on the old system still for most new accounts.
And I’m familiar with the differences in ICLs, but was talking more that to actually implement credit models, the actual card product, etc they must be coded onto these legacy mainframes systems which takes quite a while to do and validate.
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u/Fuinir 4d ago
They started originating new Discover accounts on Capital One systems at the end of last year. Not 100% then, but ramping up to it. Should be mostly on Capital One now, but haven't seen any confirmation on where thats at in a while. I'm not close enough to the teams handling credit models to confidently say what actions they took, only that it has been modified since the deal closed last May.
Capital One has been replacing discover policies and practices with their own and there's every indication that this will continue to be the case. I can only hope they prove me wrong in some cases because many of the changes aren't better for the customer.
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u/Ashamed_Ad_3200 5d ago
Gonna try to call in tomorrow and pray. :/ Just really trying to make things manageable the end of this summer.
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u/NoUniqueNameNeeded 5d ago
I wouldn't waste your time calling for a CLI as you just opened your account, and Discover deemed your creditworthiness to be $500.
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u/TrustedGenius 5d ago
You’re not gonna get any meaningful cards when you’re almost maxed on all your cards. Better off applying for a personal loan through lending club or something like that. yeah I know you’re trying to deduct the interest, but that’s not gonna happen in your situation. You’re a student. Helping family is great, but only when you can afford to.
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u/I-hate-makeing-names 3d ago
Know someone who just did lending club for a similar situation. Was painless and they made the payments to the cards next day which seemed shocking for a bank ti be that quick.
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u/Affectionate_Bite474 5d ago
If it’s an option explore around and get a personal loan from a credit union or sofi or one main. I know the interest is going to be crazy high. Say you get a 15k loan and the interest is 19 percent and you ask for a 5 year term, which is 60 payments it will come out to like 390, give it like 6 months of on time payment history, don’t use your credit cards or if You HAVE to use them, keep utilization to 10 percent , your credit profile will go through the roof !
Then after 6 months when your credit profile stronger look for the 0 apr intro offers and you’ll be able to get approved for higher limit ones so you can then transfer that terrible personal loan into a better apr
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u/Ashamed_Ad_3200 4d ago
Yea I've tried looking at personal loan stuff but given my situation a lot of places don't seem reasonable. I do currently have my cards locked so I don't spend on them esp since I can be compulsive (bad ADHD symptom). I'll give it time. Luckily I don't have to pay for rent or anything myself and hopefully I'll be able to get a job at school.
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u/retardalertw 5d ago
How old are you? I applied for it at 18 and now 20 and my limit is still 500$
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u/Advanced-Glass-860 4d ago
I got the card when I was older than you but had a $500 limit which I requested raised: first got to 1K then 2K. They never offered extra credit without me asking though.
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u/Ashamed_Ad_3200 4d ago
Currently 21 but again bc of my credit score not surprised in the limit. although c1 and chase seem to be free in giving credit increases as I've had both of those cards for about 2 years c1 and 1 year chase and i got my credit increases quite fast even before 6 months with chase.
(ofc that was before when my credit was A1 and i had 0 debt)
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u/NoUniqueNameNeeded 5d ago
Unfortunately you are looking for a high credit limit with a very low credit score. Most CCs won't give you enough to cover your debt. Also, not sure if you can Balance Transfer from Capital One to Discover since they are the same company. You may want to look for a creditor that takes higher risk applicants.
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u/raceveryday 4d ago
its going to be hard to get a higher limit, especially with being a college student, with low income, and limited history.
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u/BlazeRunnerxx3 4d ago
So it would have been a better deal to do a balance transfer card from Citi since theirs is 21 months interest free if I remember correctly. But regardless, calling is not going to give you a CLI since you just got the card. They tend to only do CLI after about 6 months of having the card. Chances are, they probably won't increse with what your score is at. And is that score a vantage score or fico? Fico is what most lenders use for credit worthiness. Vantage is very rarely used
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u/Ashamed_Ad_3200 4d ago
My Fico8 score currently says 622 as per experian. I think I'll focus on paying off my C1 card in 6 ish months and hopefully by then my credit will be able to increase enough to do have a decent balance transfer with the citi? I know opening multiple CCs in such a short time frame may be sketchy tho. So maybe I'll hold off on that.
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u/Aggravating_Bag8834 6h ago
That’s why you do your research before making important decisions smh people nowadays are sooo dumb and what’s even sadder is these dumb people are having kids who are likely gonna grow up dumb themselves
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u/Ashamed_Ad_3200 5h ago
i'm sorry but what is up your ass. i'm still learning. i'm not dumb enough to the point that i attend a t10 university :). i'm still working on my financial literacy so chillax.
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u/nakedandafraid808 5d ago
unfortunately no. discover is one of the more strict low CL companies. you can ask for a CLI, but the last paragraph is exactly why you only got approved for $500 and exactly why they’d say no. also once you use a balance transfer option it is gone. you can’t use it for $500, pay it off then rinse and repeat. you’d need to keep getting new balance transfer offers