Another Sears Mastercard Q

I got the letter from Sears saying that I had been approved for gold Sears Mastercard with a CL "up to $8,000". My current Sears store card has a $6500 CL and is over 30 years old.

My history is this: perfect credit except that I have very high utilization of my other Mastercard and Visa accounts. Because of my high utilization, most of my APR's were jacked up to horrific levels and I need to get them down. My other cards are offering me good balance transfer rates but I cannot take advantage of them because I have very little left on my credit line.

I have $5,000 in cash coming in about two weeks that I can use to pay down balances. I would like to get the Sears store card converted to a mastercard with the existing $6500 credit limit to use for BT's. The plan would be to use the cash and Sears BT to pay off a card, then use that cards BT rate to pay off another card and so on. I think I can get all my cards down to a level where the APR is about 40% or less of the current APR. My interest paid per month would drop from $1100 to about $400.

Here is the problem. The Sears offer is only for a new Mastercard, and they will pull a hard inquiry, which means they will find that I have high balances on my other cards. Probably will get a $1,000 CL.

If I could convert my existing Sears card, I could keep the $6500 CL, and they would not pull a credit report. But, when I called to request this, I was told that there is no conversion offer for me now. The only offer available is the new Mastercard which means a hard inquiry.

Is there any way to pull this off? I told the customer rep that I was refinancing my mortgage and was told not to have any hard inquiries and therefore do not want a card unless they do not pull an inquiry. She was nice, but said eveyone will eventually get an offer, but you have to wait until they make the offer.

My scores are about 680+, and I cannot get any other cards because of the high utilization. I know I can use th $5000 cash to pay down balances and take partial advantage of the BT APR's offered, but getting the Sears card converted to a Mastercard with a $6500 limit would help a lot.

Is there anyone else I could call that could help? Any way at all that you see me pulling this off?

Thanks for your help and comments

 

I wanted to add one more thing. There is no phone number on the approval, so I called the normal customer service number on my bill. The rep was knowledgeable, but could not help.

Does anyone know of anoher number with someone that has more authority to make this happen?

Any type of help would be appreciated. This is the first glimmer of hope I have had. I can afford to pay about $1200 a month, but right now almost all of that goes to interest. I need to start paying down the principal

 

MJ

Do you have a number for retention? I looked everywhere. The number I found for customer service was hard to come by. Obviously they do not want anyone calling.

Or, do I just call customer service and ask for retention?

Thanks