The OP obviously has a reason to carry the big balance despite his apparent ability to pay it off. He makes almost 200k a year; he is not dumb. Whether he takes the debt to invest in a start-up business or to gamble, we don't know. It is unlikely that whatever he's spending money one does not easily justify a bank loan; hence he is taking credit card debt instead and hoping that the profit generated more than offsets the interest payment. This is why paying off his entire balance is out of the question. His end goal is not a good credit score.
The reason the OP's account got flagged was, ironically, because he paid off the balance. A big balance payment will set up an alert at Wells Fargo, triggering a manual review of his credit standing. Once a human being takes a look, there will be personal judgement calls. The OP carrying a large balance while having the financial means to pay it off may have sounded like a suspicious activity to the credit analyst reviewing his record. What exactly is in the credit analyst's mind we don't know; but whatever it is, he has a way to justify it.
And the bad news to the OP is, Wells Fargo likely will side with the credit analyst, since they authorized him to make a professional decision. A call to Wells Fargo probably won't help unless the OP explains the reason for carrying the balance. Credit card issuers do not like to see consumers owing a lot of debt on their cards; credit card debt presents a much higher risk than bank loans. They probably will ask him why he is maintaining balances on other cards, and if he can't give a reasonable explanation, they won't budge.
The only thing that can help the OP's situation is a balance transfer credit card which he can obtain with even a high utilization ratio. Such a card with a 10k limit will not only eliminate the negative impact of the closed WF account but also will give him the option of paying part of his balance at a much lower rate. Otherwise, other credit issuers may visit him soon due to the new, higher utilization ratio.
Doubt you have any kind of legal recourse.
But the reason for them doing it might depend. Did you have that 10k nearly maxed out or over 5k for a long period time? Perhaps they wanted to reduce your limit a long time ago but didn't because you already had so much debt. But once you paid it down they reduced as they wanted to, to prevent them from lending you that much money again. Its good that eveyrthing has been paid of on time. Something proberly changed in there decision making a while back, and once you were down to zero debt, they reduced your credit accordinly. An example might be if you had that debt since back when credit limits were high and easy to get, but didn't pay it down to zero until recently. But I have no clue what your history on that particular card is like, so my thoery might be irrelevant.
Thread locked.
It's run it's course and the last few pages were removed as extraneous (charitably speaking).
-- CareBear Rev
