First of all I used my Discover Card to buy something online. how do I cancel it? Hoping for any response. Another question I got... My TU report is spotless, with no inquiries until now, so I applied for two known TU pullers: UMB Linux and Barclays..

UMB denied me, citing "sufficient obligations with bankcards" which doesn't mean anything as far as I can tell. I had wanted the hidden tradeline, but didn't want to bother with calling for recon, since I haven't heard a ton about people having good luck with that..

So I applied for the Virgin America Barclays card, and was given a 48 hour notice, but I went to their status page and it showed me as denied (don't know why they didn't just say that at the outset.) I called this morning for recon. The guy pulled up my report, asked me what I did in my job, and said "I don't know why this was denied, I can set you up right now for $4500." The phone call by my cell phone timer took under a minute and a half, including a brief hold time..

So I've officially replaced all the credit I lost when I got Amexed, though ironically they are reopening my account (story below)..

On the Amex situation, some of you might remember my WTF thread where I paid them $10,330 and they immediately closed my account. I wrote an email to Ken Chenault who is the CEO, and got a phone call the next day from one of his underlings. We played phone tag for a bit and then we had a lengthy conversation regarding the status of my account etc..

The guy let slip that their new requirement for an open account is a 750 score on Experian. I am at 726. I pointed out to him that my score would likely be above their limit if they would correctly update my balance instead of updating it 60 days in arrears. He conceded this was probably true but that until the credit score showed the change, his hands were tied. However, he did say that they would reopen my account if my score went above 750, which it almost assuredly will when my utilization goes from 43% to 1% when they finally report their stupid balances correctly..

This may be useful information for those of you thinking of applying for Amex cards, as the score cutoff seems to be 750 now. I know it was less than that when I applied, I think my score was right around 700 when I got this card back in 2007..

Moral of the story: if you have decent credit and get Amexed, raise a stink about it. They WILL reopen accounts or undo CLDs if you bug the right person. This is assuming you want to keep the card, of course. Mine is one of my older ones and my highest CL, so it was worth keeping despite their obnoxious behavior if ONLY for util purposes...