PART 1
When it comes down to it, you have a lot of choices with tradelines.
There are many different lenders to choose from, all big banks with cards that we’ve found to have consistent posting ratios.
But is there a difference if you select a Bank of America vs Citi? What is the difference between getting a line to boost credit if it’s USAA vs US Bank? Is there a difference at all?
Well, kind of.
Here we will break down the difference between some of the different lenders and why we format them the way we do.
KNOWING THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN AU TRADELINES FOR SALE
Let’s start with…
Bank of America: You may notice that BoA (if you’re looking at ourretail site) is much more expensive than most of the others. The reason for this (if you see our wholesale site you will see this metric) is that almost all of them are formatted as 4-cycle authorized user tradelines.
Why do we do that?
Well, because BoA has a tendency to shut down our cardholders’ cards if there is too much AU activity. This is why we have them set to 4 cycles, to mitigate the risk of closure. They post consistently to 3 out of 3 bureaus, and if you have a client (or are someone) who is doing a mortgage, then a 4-cycle line may be just the ticket.
USAA AND CAPITAL ONE
First things first, a tip: For USAA you will need to be a U.S. citizen. Also, do not get a USAA if you have any previous (or current) history with the lender.
With either of these authorized user tradelines for sale, they will mostly be formatted for 3 cycles. The reasons are similar to the BoA. Both of these lenders don’t like a lot of AU activity, so we format them for 3 cycles to protect the cardholders from losing their cards. These are also good for mortgages, or anything that may take longer than two months.
With most credit tradelines for sale, as in ones that are not any of the aforementioned 3, our minimum formatted cycles is 2. That is approximately 50-60 days.
Why did we do it this way?
A few reasons. If you buy more than one, and for whatever reason one line posts and the other doesn’t, by the time you replace the non-posting line, it will be almost (or a bit longer) through a single cycle on a tradeline.
Non-posting lines are not super common, but it does happen, and if the lines are sold for one cycle, that leads to problems.
The second reason we sell at a minimum of 2 cycles is that…people usually take longer than they think to enact their plans.
Or,
You may need to modify your plan.
As an example let’s say you want to get a car, but you can’t get it at the dealership you want, so you have to look around. This may take time. Or perhaps you’re applying for a credit card, and you need to add more lines, get a secured card, clean some more things off your reports…all could potentially take longer than a cycle. When getting into seasoned tradelines for sale, it’s always better to give yourself as much time as possible.
What about all the other lenders we have?
We pretty much consider all of our tradelines as having as good a chance as any other for posting to 3 out of 3 bureaus. But there are two special cases:
WELLS FARGO AND CITI
With WF cards, they will almost never, ever post to Equifax, as in 99% of the time.
That’s just the way they are, but if you (or you have a client) are alright with that, they are some of the cheapest tradelines we have.
Pro Tip: We always guarantee 2 out of the 3 bureaus for all of our lines. We can’t ever say which two though.
As far as Citi goes, they are finicky. Perhaps it’s old technology, but whatever the reason, Citi sometimes has difficulty posting. And if there is difficulty, that usually means we need to do a soft pull, and that will mean the line will not show on Equifax either.
Also, please keep in mind. If you (or your client) has any past or present relationship with Citibank, we cannot place an order for that line, as it leads to posting issues more often than not.
This is also why when finding cheap tradelines for sale, Citi is lower priced than the rest of the inventory.
