I had Cap.1's subprime for life card from 94 to 00. It started out fully secured and later was partially secured. By 00 when I had cleaned up my credit to the point that I could get practically any card I applied for, Cap.1 still refused to unsecure it. By that point the CL had reached 5K secured by a 2K deposit. I closed the account, they refunded the 2K and wrote a letter confirming that it was being reported as closed to all three CRAs. A month after I got this letter, they sent an offer to increase my CL by $500 for an additional deposit of $99! Cap.1 still reports the account as open and sends monthly statements showing a credit line of $5K, available credit of -0- and no payment due. My experience confirms what others have said, once subprime with Cap.1, always subprime.
If you make it to platinum, I think you can qualify for all thier better rates...getting out of subprime hell. As long as you have a subprime card, you will be treated that way forever. But with these guys, I'll have a $3500 limit by the end of next month. I applied right after I posted earlier and got the toy card that I expected...$300. I'm going to hold off on combing the accounts for now. I'm gonna use it "wisely" over the next 6 months, possibly a year and see if they won't bump me up to $1500 on that card. I was explained that once you get $5K in CL that you can combine all them and upgrade to Platinum. 6 mos to a year of torture won't be so bad to accomplish that for my longest active acct. Now if I somehow can't get them up to $1500 on this 2nd card, then I'll be mad and use PFB to get what I want. I don't think I'll have a problem though. The original card only had a $1k limit and got bumped to $3200 within a year and a half. Oh well, guess we'll find out.
