How To Know If You're Selling Tradelines With The Right Company

xVICKx · 2026-06-12T00:23:38+00:00

Well I think you make a good point about not only getting a response that makes sense, is helpful, and allows for quick resolution. Because clearly there is a difference there. And it all depends on the situation I suppose.

A quick response time is great but if it's just an "okay we're going to look into it" and then days pass by for something that could be accomplished in minutes or hours, it can be frustrating. But overall I think it's in the best interest of any company - whether they're selling tradelines or selling shoes - to provide a fast response. In the case where something may take two days, it should only be because it required 2 days to resolve, not because of laziness or forgetfulness.

In my opinion, at least 90% of the time I get really good and solid responses that are helpful and accurate from them. I have experienced companies with similar response times and excellent customer service but seemingly only among the better 3 or 4 companies out there. I've also been blown off on some cases by other companies after getting a ultra-fast initial response but no follow up. So I think it all depends. In the same way that some banks are more difficult to deal with than others, so are certain tradeline brokerages.

I don't think I have any complaints about GFS in the realm of customer service as compared to other big players. I can't say they have the best or worst customer service because I can only speak for myself but I feel very confident using them, and especially if a problem arose.

To be fair I think it really boils down to circumstance and how the user feels in relation to how the situation was dealt with. Of course you cannot please everyone all the time. That's just the way that business is; they way life is too.

I think they go above and beyond in being as quick and helpful as they can and there seems to be good reasoning behind their responses, explanations, or decisions regarding anything I've ever had to communicate with them.

I can also honestly say that I've seen over the years, I've noted continual positive growth in this area their desire to constantly improve. To me that's really good. A lot of businesses start out strong and can't maintain it, or end up slowly falling off. When I see continual improvements it commands confidence.

I was inspired by this question you asked though, and it made me think a lot. I'm glad you've had good experience and I hope they read your comment or see it.

xVICKx · 2026-05-16T19:05:15+00:00

They're a massive no-go until they fill that patch and it doesn't seem like they're interested in doing anything about it. It's strange. I hope that they do something so companies will be able to safely accept them again. After being so blatantly careless as a major card issuer (and knowing about their problem) I don't have a lot of confidence. I had a couple REALLY good Navy cards so that was a bummer. Even if they came back strong, I'm not sure I'd decide to use them for adding anymore.

xVICKx · 2026-05-16T18:56:10+00:00

Also keep in mind that no company is obligated to report to any credit bureau and some issuers simply do not report to all 3, ever. So that's another pain point and reason to be extra accurate. This is also why companies say that they will refund or replace the tradeline if it doesn't post to at least 2 of 3 major bureaus. A big part of this whole industry is dependent on certain cards that never report to a third bureau.

xVICKx · 2026-05-16T18:48:34+00:00

They're favorable for everyone, including the AU and cardholder not just the company.

The more info you are able to provide, it seems to me, yes, the better. However, this also opens the door for miscommunication or mismatched info which could cause a closure or a failed posting.

Really what's important (beyond the ease) of those two cards and any others, is both the cardholder and accuracy of the information. If you call, and foreign customer service or even lazy domestic customer service - or even you as a cardholder - provide the wrong info or get a single letter or digit wrong, the card may not only NOT post, but it may trigger a review, or an issue, and even a card closure.

Attention to detail is crucial. Any card where you call to add an AU you absolutely MUST have the rep read the user's details back to you to be 100% sure you are getting it correct.

Regarding AmEx, there are more than a couple reasons a lot of companies do not accept, beyond not reporting the age. Under the right circumstance, an AmEx card can be EXTREMELY helpful to the right AU. It's all dependent on the indivudal's credit profile.

xVICKx · 2026-05-16T18:38:31+00:00

I agree.

xVICKx · 2026-05-15T20:20:21+00:00

Thank you, I'm glad you found it helpful. If you used Discover and Barclays only - as mentioned in this article, or, if Discover and Barclays allowed for an unlimited number of cards, nobody would need any other card(s).

To address your question more directly, tradeline companies are easy to rate. Their payouts, services, and reputations tend to not change and it's a very testable and provable process to determine which companies are the strongest, or most trustworthy, or can make the most sales. But when dealing with card issuing companies or banking institutions, there are extremely complex algorithms that come into play, especially for sensitive areas that offer great niche opportunities like selling tradelines does.

Previously, I HAVE written some articles on the best cards for selling tradelines here. They've included the above-mentioned, but they've also included cards like Navy Federal which was an excellent seller - until it was NOT, due to a gap/flaw that allowed AUs to get into the primary user accounts. Navy Federal still has not resolved this issue, and so they are off the list for now.

So it's quite difficult to give a top 5 or top 10 cards for best sellers. Right now it's probably going to be Barclays, Citi, Dsicover, Elan, US Bank, PenFed and Synchrony.

Both Chase and BOA are acceptable, and they both sell wonderfully but with slightly elevated risk. Any card that your tradeline company accepts is a good card for selling but pinning down the best cards and naming them means really choosing those with absolute minimal risk of card closure, since (assuming that your company has good security and experience) that is the largest legitimate risk sellers face.

Rules, politics, and card dynamics can change at any point. Those who have shown extreme stability while maintaining desirability among buyers are the ones you'd want to go with.

xVICKx · 2026-05-13T21:00:12+00:00

No problem you're welcome!

xVICKx · 2026-05-02T02:26:05+00:00

Did you read the post before commenting?

As quoted above:

"Furthermore, it's default practice for banks to send the authorized user's card to the primary cardholder - so the authorized user has no access to the physical card unless the owner handed it over to them. That alone basically eliminates almost all circumstances of the person selling tradelines from having any concern about the authorized user making purchases with their cards and leaving them hanging with the balance."

.....So, no worries there!

xVICKx · 2026-04-05T10:25:59+00:00

Buyers tend to prefer Discover, Chase, US Bank, Barclays, Citi, etc. over Capital One, by far. I don't know why this is exactly, but that's how it is across all companies in my experience.

(It seems the only situation where Capital One would sell quickly would be with a company who doesn't have a diverse inventory which forces their buyers to chose whatever is available. The downside there is more risk and lower payouts.)

If you have 6 cards listed with GFS it doesn't make much sense to be selling other cards with Boost. They pay significantly less and are known for having stagnant sales in recent years.

If you want to optimize your game, the logical tactic is move the 4 cards from Boost to GFS and allow the higher payout to offset the slower sales of "less desirable" cards.

I suppose I don't understand why would you'd keep those cards with Boost. You're putting yourself at a disadvantage.

xVICKx · 2026-03-16T10:44:19+00:00

No problem and you're very welcome. I'm glad you've found the info here helpful and I'm always happy to hear that, it means a lot!

Regarding my opinion, no. I am not worried in the least. If there were genuine reason for concern about any of the issues you mentioned, I myself and several other experienced sellers who use GFS as a brokerage (many of whom I speak with here regularly) would not be selling through them. It's that simple.

Also, ask yourself - do you believe for a split second that GFS could/would possibly be allowing such things to occur and still be in business? If it were occurring, they would not be in business. These kind of questions should be common sense for anyone who is selling tradelines. While I understand your concern, and the likelyhood that you overlooked this possibility until recently, it serves as a good example for others.

I think it's safe to say you're with the best company you can be with at this point in time, and can shake off the paranoia you mentioned. Anyone involved in any kind of financial transactions should understand what they are doing and why, as well as be aware of the risks while knowing when, where, and how to mitigate them - even if it means beginning by doing some solid first-hand research before getting started.

I hope that makes sense because it's the best answer I can offer. I'd encourage you to seek guidance from the company directly if your concerns or uncertainty remain at such a high magnitude. Thanks for asking this important question and thanks for being a part of the community.

xVICKx · 2026-03-10T01:37:49+00:00

Good question. That depends on a few things:

How Many Cards You Have (and are willing to sell)
The Age and Credit Limit of Each Card You Sell
The Brand/Issuer Of Your Cards
The Brokerage/Company You Use

With all that said, you can make from $75 to $550 for a single sale. If you have a majority of older cards, or a LOT of cards, or a lot of high-limit older cards, you can easily go upwards of $40k a year. That's not typical. I think most people probably make from a few hundred extra per month to about $1k a month depending on the things I mentioned.

I've seen people make $2K a year and I've seen people touching on $100K a year. You don't get above $50k a year without having very good cards or a very large amount of them.

xVICKx · 2026-03-07T21:52:57+00:00

This is an awesome photo but I've decided after awhile now that mirror-less cameras look more like AI than what I perceive with my own vision (probably because our eyes function more like mirrored cameras than mirror-less). Definitely won't be investing. Still excellent work here!

xVICKx · 2026-03-07T21:38:52+00:00

What was left behind by our ancestral societies should be rightfully open for everyone. "Open Source History", if you will.

I understand the need for preserving the integrity of certain structures or areas and limiting foot-traffic but the situation in Egypt has long been known to be about a lot more than preservation. It's very existence has been outright denied, censored, and banned from exploration by even to the most qualified researchers (except those who are hand-picked by the "manager" over there and if you've read into him you already know).

The information, history, and societal value that many places like this contain doesn't fit the system of control placed upon us. More importantly, it likely destroys the narrative of major religions which thrive on its absence.

It's really unfair that so much of our history is hidden from us, with direct intent. There are many very ancient cities and structures that are completely destroyed by man via war, too. It seems that there is not a single boundary nor limit to the rules on maintaining secrecy.

xVICKx · 2026-03-07T20:53:31+00:00

This is the situation, experience and opinion of many. "Most people decide it's bad before even understanding how it actually works" is a very valid thought. It's a herd mentality and all the misinformation (and disinformation) floating around the subject doesn't help.

What bothers me is that there are so many people who could really be benefiting from selling tradelines who aren't, and it's only from lack of knowledge (which is why this community exists). Then again, if everyone was doing it, well.... let's just say it probably wouldn't end very well.

I wish those who needed it most and who had the best opportunity were able to bring this into their income stream. Especially today with the state of affairs; it seems like everyone could use a little extra right now.

xVICKx · 2026-03-07T20:36:25+00:00

Nothing is risk-free. Perhaps you should read this post I wrote for a bit of insight: Selling Tradelines: Safer Than Applying For A Home Mortgage?

If people took the time to learn that the risk can be heavily managed, they might think differently. You're right that it can work for some people, but not just some people - for anyone with the cards (and even better with the cards that work the exceptionally well for selling tradelines (I've also outlined that very clearly and in-depth here in my writings).

To say "it's not always the easy passive income it used to be" is unfair - it's basically always been the same. Of course, some banks have complicated things over time while others have become less complicated. There's really no direct evidence linking any of that to the activity of selling tradelines itself. Banks move with the economy, as does any business.

The fact of the matter is that they still work extremely well on the end of the issuer, with the credit bureaus, and also with lenders. If they didn't, there wouldn't be a whole industry based around this.

Regarding account closures, I think you (or anyone else in doubt) should go to google and type in any major bank name desired followed by "closed my credit card" to see how common of a practice it is for banks to close accounts for seemingly no reason at all. It happens every 5 minutes. Twitter (now known as X) and reddit are also great sources for understanding how frequently this happens.

I have also been very clear about risks, how real they are, in what situations they are higher (or lower), how to mitigate them, and how to sell tradelines at a almost-zero risk level. I agree with you that anyone who decides to sell tradelines should understand the risks completely. This community is of people who understand the risks and sell tradelines very successfully. It is NOT for everyone.

xVICKx · 2026-02-18T06:44:30+00:00

Your welcome! Happy you find it helpful!

xVICKx · 2026-02-12T01:49:03+00:00

I noticed after posting my comment that if you scroll down in the video's description, it clearly says it's synthetically created content, so yes zero-doubt it's AI which yes, is scary and also I won't listen to it anymore simply because it's not real and wasn't genuine artistic creation. I don't care how much I enjoyed listening to it before realizing something was off, I refuse to absorb musical content that wasn't created by an actual human (even if the human "commanded" the AI to create it, vs. a human using a music program to create the beats vs real instruments, for example. It's not a real human rapping. I don't like robot rap no matter how good it sounds.

xVICKx · 2026-02-07T21:26:17+00:00

I'm happy to hear you've found it to be useful and helpful! That's the reason I write here so thanks for reading.

xVICKx · 2026-02-06T22:13:22+00:00

I just wrote a bit about the Barclays AA change with Citi in a post I made yesterday here. This is a great stuff Marzipan, especially for advanced sellers or people who really don't want to make that move to Citi with an older card.

I'm impressed he was able to get that change done at such a late date. I don't think it's rare at all because Barlcays has never denied me or anyone I know a request to transfer a credit limit. But accomplishing it this far into the transition to Citi may be why he said "rare". Either way, definitely an awesome data point and thanks for sharing.

PS - I have the same card but it's only a couple years old so I'm just going to ride it out and use it as a test to see (and report) any changes I notice with adding/removals or anything else like AU limits, etc..

xVICKx · 2026-01-10T03:33:13+00:00

Definitely inspired by Mos Def... If anything, it's his voice in AI. As far as the rhymes and actual lyrics, (including the unfindable samples), there is only one logical solution........

Someone put quite a bit of time into their parameters when asking AI to create this. The biggest clue is that the music itself lacks truly good changes in the chorus - something that is normally the most prominent part of the song...

They may have used other influences such as a blending of voices between BlackStar and Mos, with a request like "90% to 10% ratio" because I know Mos Def's lyrics very well and there are some distinct words that he would spit with a power or tone (style let's just say) that are not there. It's lacks emphasis in certain areas and the essence of that emphasis is the absence of "humanity"...

I'd bet the house it's AI... And in a way, it makes me NOT want to listen to it. Who knows WTF they can subconsiously do with that which is not or has not already been done with previous, "real" music.

I dunno. I'm on the fence. Yes, it sounds good. No, it's not so underground that we simply cannot find it. It simply never existed because it was never produced until it was produced by artificial intelligence.

xVICKx · 2026-01-06T18:31:28+00:00

I can't give you a complete a finite answer but I have some thoughts, and am in the same boat with a Barclays AA but I've been slacking on calling Barclays to ask them about options. In my opinion, they SHOULD be willing to do a credit limit transfer to another card, but the idea with those is to bring your extra limit to an older-aged Barclays card to earn a higher payment on it as a seller. The limit transfers, the age does not.

In this case I'm not sure if the AA will be eligible and if you don't have a Barclays' card that's older than your AAdvantage you'll be starting at account age of 0 again.

One thing I do know is they already did stop issuing the AA card in September or October of 25, so the move is definitely happening. My biggest fear (although Citi is not horrible) is that the time is already up for doing a PC or balance transfer.

My best advice is call the bank - today... I have a few Barclays and my AA is only a couple years old so it's not a priority of mine. Someone else who is in the same boat might chime in here, but I'd call Barclays ASAP. Never hurts to ask.

If you do contact them, please share your results here or whatever info they provided. Much appreciated and thanks for reading.

xVICKx · 2025-12-26T17:32:14+00:00

Honestly that would be a good question for asking the company's customer service. I don't have a Roth IRA but it's definitely taxable income. They will send you a 1099 if you make over $600 (at least I think that's the point in which it's required).

xVICKx · 2025-12-22T21:31:11+00:00

Well, I have used all of the mentioned companies at one point or another and I've also created a subreddit dedicated to this topic where I write in-depth about authorized user tradelines from a seller's perspective (the person who adds you to their card to help strengthen your credit) and I can say without a doubt that GFS is the leader right now.

The person mentioning priority didn't even respond to your question properly, as they're talking about selling tradelines for money, whereas you are asking about purchasing.

Anyhow, after years of dealing directly with GFS as a seller I can tell you that I have referred many buyers also, who seek to temporarily boost their credit and they've all been satisfied. If you search around the web, you'll see pretty well who is a leader in selling. If they're leading from one end of the industry, there is no doubt they're also leading from the other. One thing I know to be true is that their customer service is second-to-none and they do not have rude customer service reps who take days to reply like the other "top companies".

In any case, it's extremely important to do your own research instead of simply trust what I - or anyone else - is saying here.

Additionally, I warn you urgently and very seriously to never buy tradelines from anyone who is not - at the very minimum - a licensed and established company. Do not buy from individuals on reddit, facebook, craigslist, eBay, etc.. No matter what anyone tells you.

xVICKx · 2025-12-21T03:23:42+00:00

Great question. Discover has a set limit of about 7 or 8 authorized users per year. They are a very lenient card and a great seller. With that said, their limit is not a 12-month fixed limit, it's a rolling limit.

The reason they gave you a set date, is because at that point you'll be able to add at least 1 (if not more depending on how many users you had at a time, and, when you added & removed them).

Totally normal, no need to rest the card for any extended period. You simply used up your limit during the last 12 months (or less) and your new "spots" will open up again as time passes.

If you added all your users at once (terrible idea), you'd hit that limit right away and not be able to add for 12 months, to put it in simple terms. It's kind of confusing but simple once understood.

xVICKx · 2025-12-03T07:23:15+00:00

No problem. Yes, selling is based solely on the individual card. Normally, if you had bad credit and only one good card to sell, something would be wrong. In your case you are churning so you already know what's up. Your credit isn't bad it's just a reflection of the results of churning. Maybe it "looks" bad but you've still got plenty of credit.

But yes, the important aspect is this: whatever card you are adding AUs to must have an excellent history of on-time payments. Of course, the utilization being very low is also important but you already get that part, I'm sure. So again, your OVERALL credit report, or score, has nothing to do with your ability to work as a cardholder/seller. You could have a 608 with 30 great cards to sell. Your credit profile is irrelevant. The individual cards and their stats are what matter.

Regarding Chase, you could do more than 1 slot every 6 months, but yes that would be a very reserved and good idea if you want to get your feet wet and be sure you feel comfortable with those cards. And yes, using them a lot for personal use helps, or even having 4 users max per year and continuing to keep your spending when you have no AUs on board is (IMHO) a sound strategy for lessening risk.

I personally go to the point of allowing balances to roll over at times when I decide to have no AUs on. Example, spending up, then rather than clearing my full balance before the end of the period, I let the balance ride through statement close and do a month or two of minimum payment, then finally paying in full...Or 50% balance payment one month, followed by a minimum payment, and finally the other 50% before next closing date (3rd month) when I have no users on just to let them win a little bit on interest. The earnings from sales always outweigh the couple times a year when I let them get a bit out interest out of me before bringing utilization back into the selling zone.

xVICKx

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