25 Things Everybody Should Know About Bank of America Credit Cards

We’ve done this for Citi, American Express & Chase before so now it’s Bank of America’s turn. Here are 19 things everybody should know about Bank of America when it comes to their credit cards.

1. Bank of America has an application rule called 2/3/4. They’ll only approve you for at most two cards per rolling 2 months, three cards per rolling 12 months, and four cards per rolling 24 months.
2. Bank of America won’t approve you if you have too many recent new cards opened across all banks. Reports indicate a soft limit of 6 new cards in the past 12 months for those who have deposit accounts with the bank; 2 new cards in the past 12 months for those who don’t.
3. Bank of America will merge multiple hard credit pulls into a single hard pull. You need to apply on the same day. Keep in mind sometimes personal and business inquiries will merge, but sometimes they won’t. Recent datapoints are suggesting Bank of America no longer combines pulls.
4. If you’re denied for a Bank of America card, call their reconsideration department! In a lot of cases you’ll be able to get that denial turned into an approval by answering some basic questions. If you haven’t called reconsideration before, read our tips first. They might also only do a soft pull on your credit report if you’re denied.
5. It’s possible to check for pre-approved offers with Bank of America. As far as I know they never show offers that are higher than the public bonuses though.
6. There is no hard limit on the amount of credit cards you can have with them. They are more concerned about the total credit limit that they extend you. Sometimes they will automatically reallocate credit limits from existing cards to approve you. Some people are being limited to four cards.
7. You may receive an inferior offer instead of being denied. A lot of the Bank of America credit cards have different tiers (e.g Signature, Platinum, Secured). If you’re not approved for the Signature card (usually due to Bank of America already extending you too much credit) they might approve you for the Platinum card instead that comes with a lower sign up bonus.
8. It’s possible to churn Bank of America cards. In the past there hasn’t been any waiting period (even possible to get multiples of the same card in the same day), but it now seems like they are more strict on this with something called the 24 month rule.
9. Bank of America does a soft pull for credit limit increases. They used to do a hard pull, but this has since changed to a soft pull.
10. Reallocating your credit limits between your cards is only a soft pull. Sometimes you can call up after being approved for the Platinum card and offer to reallocate existing credit limits to the new card.
11. If Bank of America increases the sign up bonus on a card you recently applied for, they’ll probably match it. No matter the card issuer, it’s always worth asking for a bonus match but Bank of America has a history of matching them.
12. Bank of America will expedite your card if you have a valid reason. For example, if your heading international and need the card before your trip.
13. Bank of America will usually waive the annual fee on your card, but you need to ask. It’s generally worth calling their retention department after the annual fee posts to get it waived, when your card has been open for 180 days (or 180 days after the annual fee posts in year two onwards) call again and try to get some free points/miles. I haven’t seen them waiving the annual fee on the Premier Rewards card.
14. They will also refund the annual fee in most cases if you cancel within one statement cycle. This seems to depend your banking history with Bank of America though.
15. You can downgrade your Bank of America credit cards. Now that the better balance rewards card is no longer available there isn’t that many good options.
16. Bank of America used to offer a referral program to card members. Unfortunately it looks like this program was axed.
17. Bank of America will sometimes pull a different credit bureau if you have one or more of them frozen. This seems to vary wildly person to person though, you can’t give them a PIN to access a frozen report though.
18. They’ll let you change the statement closing date on your account. You just need to call the number on the back of your card, but as far as I know you can’t use this feature to expedite bonus points/miles posting.
19. Bank of America reports your credit utilization as what shows on your statement balance. So make sure to pay it off earlier if you need to lower your credit utilization for FICO score purposes. It might also be possible to get them to report this mid cycle by changing your contact information.
20. Bank of America will typically only give you an instant credit card number on the Alaska credit cards. This can be useful when you have a big purchase coming out and want to knock out a minimum spend requirement.
21. The period you have to meet your minimum spend requirement begins at card activation. It’s also based on billing cycles (e.g you’ll have three billing cycles to spend $1,000). Reader leifinseoul says that they were told it was based on card approval. 
22. Bank of America business credit cards don’t get reported to the personal credit bureaus which is useful for keeping your credit report cleaner.
23. If you closed out a Bank of America credit card and change your mind, you can have the account reinstated for up to six months, but it will require a hard pull, unfortunately.
24. You can check your credit card’s application status online.
25. Setting up auto pay with Bank of America is a pain, in addition there is mixed data points on what happens when you make a partial payment.
26. Reduce credit limits with Bank of America before cancelling your cards. Bank of America has a maximum credit limit they like to extend per individual and when you close a card that credit limit is still counted for another year. By reducing your credit limit before cancelling you free up that limit earlier.

You can view other posts in this series by clicking the links below.

• American Express
• Barclaycard
• Capital One
• Chase
• Citi
• Comenity
• Discover
• Synchrony
• TD Bank
• US Bank
• Wells Fargo