got too many recent inquiries? You might NOT want to apply for US Bank CC. It could possibly lead to shutdown of ALL USB CCs.

A user reports the following at FT:

USB closed my two new accounts, personal and business flexperks from Olympics promo, along with my other two accounts from last year (flexperks amex and club carlson). Haven’t got a chance to talk to the person who made decision but the guy I spoke to was because they “discovered” later there were a bunch of other accounts opened recently and would like to see how I handled those first. I’ve only had about 4 new personal accounts this calendar year… Somebody doesn’t want to pay out these Olympics bonuses.

ShutdownEverydayAllDay.com has a blog on how one of this reader got shutdown.

Summary of the blog post:

A reader told me his US Bank cards had gotten shut down and he wasn’t sure what happened. And then a few days later, he got the rejection letter for the Flexperks card, and if you look at the timing on the reasons, it’s clear that not only did US Bank reject his new application, they decided to close his 2 current cards. It seems that if you’ve had too many inquiries or new accounts lately, you may want to abstain from applying for a new US Bank credit card, else you may get the axe.

There is another shutdown DP in the comment section of the said blog post:

I've had a heck of a time trying to get my FP Biz approved. Already have 3 USB cards (including 2 FP) with lines of 22k total.....[blah blah blah]..... Edit: I'm shutdown too! They even closed my oldest acct (Elan). That was the real shocker. I escalated by emailing CEO to recon. Now I'm trying to reopen or at least get my FP out. I had $900 worth! For those of you who might call me an idiot, they slashed a CL down to 5k in Aug and then brought it back up to 11k. So I had no reason to suspect they were concerned about credit risk. Total CLs were ~29k USB + 10k Elan.

edit: Something to keep in mind that this is most definitely not a universal rule, hence the title has words like "might" and "possibly". I know there are plenty among us who have been approved for USB cards with 15+ cards in less than a year. Nevertheless, these recent data point should make you weight in signup bonus of your new USB application vs the value your current USB account possesses.