Capital One Refuses to Lower Our Credit Limit

[Anonymous]

We are refinancing our mortgage and want to "clean up" our credit score.  We maintain a revolving monthly balance of only 15 percent of our three credit cards limits and asked Capital One to lower their card limit down from 15k to 8k, but they refused.  Short of closing the account, we are wondering what to do next.

[navigatethis12]

Is there a specific reason why you feel that you need to do this?

[john398]

ok I am lost, was it sugested that you lower your crediyt limit by lowing your credit? I can noyt see why you cannot get a refinance with high limits....I would think it would help

[pizzadude]

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@Anonymous wrote:

We are refinancing our mortgage and want to "clean up" our credit score.  We maintain a revolving monthly balance of only 15 percent of our three credit cards limits and asked Capital One to lower their card limit down from 15k to 8k, but they refused.  Short of closing the account, we are wondering what to do next.

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This is probably not a good time to lower your credit limits, because your revolving utilization will increase when you do this, and as a result your FICO score will go down.

Why are you trying to do this ?

[Anonymous]

Our credit score is actually 793.  The score report indicated one reason the score was "lowered" was the high revolving credit limit.  We have a total limit of 33k on three credit cards but usually charge, and fully pay off, about 4k per month.  I have read that the "sweet spot" on credit card "balance to limit" is around 30 percent, indicating that we need no more than around 13k in total credit limit.

[MarcinXP]

I'm confused by this move as well. Did someone suggest you do this or are you thinking this will improve your score? In-fact lowering your limits might hurt your FICO depending on how your utilization is reporting

[CS800]

Lowering your CL will increase your util = possibility of credit score taking a plunge.

[jsucool76]

From what i've read on this forum, the "sweet spot" for utilization is anywhere from 1-9% of your total limit. 

[webhopper]

Where did you get this score report from?  Was it from MyFico?

[MarcinXP]

Ok I get it now...no you definitely don't want to lower your limits!!!! What this means is that your utilization is too high right now and you want to bring it down under 30%..(Ideally for best FICO 10% is the sweet spot). You say right now your limits total is 33K which means that you don't want to be using more than 11K on those cards...that would be 30%....ideally you probably want to be at 3K in credit reporting so that way you are under 10%.

What you are trying to do actually will hurt your FICO score even more. Say right now you have 11K in debt on a credit of 33K...that is 30%!!!! if Capital One would lower your limit to 8K as you want this would mean that you would have 11K of debt on limits of 25K which is 44%!!! your credit score would go down...you should be doing the opposite...you should be calling each card and asking for credit increase...if you have 11K in debt and they increase your limits from 33K to 50K you would go from 30% to just over 20%!!! that would improve your score a lot!

For Ideal FICO you should pay off every credit card to 0 balance and let it report it that way with one card reporting between 5%-9%...that's when you get IDEAL utilization and your FICO at it's highest!