Credit Limit Being Lowered? What to Do

Over the past 12-18 months most of the large credit card issuers have been changing the terms of some of their customer’s accounts. The reason they’ve been doing so is because of a general lack of comfort for credit risk as well as the slumping economy. Changing ...Please sign up or login to see the rest of this page.

Banks Bad Behavior and Your Credit

“We are writing to advise you about a change being made to your account.” This prologue is a part of letters being sent to millions of U.S consumers and sets an ominous tone for the remainder of the communication. The “change” being referred to is either your credit card account has been closed or the credit limit has been severely slashed. In this particular example, the credit limit was lowered on a Barclay’s Bank credit card by $15,000.

In normal economic times a credit card issuer would only take such adverse action against one of their cardholders if they’ve done something wrong, such as miss a payment. However millions upon millions of cardholders are seeing their terms changed because of seemingly innocuous actions such as “a change in spending patterns” or “inactivity.” I guess we can attribute this to the fact that we’re not in normal economic times, but it’s not fair to consumers to leave it at that. Closing accounts and lowering credit limits can harm your FICO® credit scores. And since these actions are being taken against consumers who, in many cases, have fantastic credit scores the damage can be dramatic. Here’s what you can do…...Please sign up or login to see the rest of this page.