Is there a cap on net credit limits for utilization purposes??

[Anonymous]

I just got a Scorepower report and noted that my utilization was cited at 5%. However, with the balance quoted, it should have been only 2.5%. Obviously, FICO did not total up all of my credit limits. Is there a ceiling on any given credit card at which FICO does not consider the total credit limit available???  For example, if you have a $60K limit, is it fully factored into your scoring??

Thanks,

[haulingthescoreup]

No, CC's (and lines of credit) with CL's of somewhere around $30K or more are not factored in. Also, some cards, generally Visa Signature and Mastercard World cards, don't report a credit limit. They report your highest balance instead, which can really mess things up.

[MattH]

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@haulingthescoreup wrote:
No, CC's (and lines of credit) with CL's of somewhere around $30K or more are not factored in. Also, some cards, generally Visa Signature and Mastercard World cards, don't report a credit limit. They report your highest balance instead, which can really mess things up.

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Traditional AMEX charge cards (Green, Gold, and Platinum) have no preset limit and therefore only report the high balance.  If %utilization were an issue for me, I might fix this by putting all my spending for a single month (at least, all I spend with merchants who take AMEX) on my AMEX in order to bump up the high balance.

[haulingthescoreup]

The only problem with this strategy for AmEx charge cards is that, unlike other CC's, AmEx reports the highest balance that was ever posted on a statement. Other cards report the highest balance at any point in a billing cycle, even when the statement balance was $0, so this strategy would work if needed.

So if you were to load up an AmEx card to establish a highest-ever balance, you'd have to let it show as a balance on your reports, which might backfire with other lenders. Not to mention that it would take two months for the balance to display $0 again.

Really, they can be the most maddening CCC...

[MattH]

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@haulingthescoreup wrote:
The only problem with this strategy for AmEx charge cards is that, unlike other CC's, AmEx reports the highest balance that was ever posted on a statement. Other cards report the highest balance at any point in a billing cycle, even when the statement balance was $0, so this strategy would work if needed.

So if you were to load up an AmEx card to establish a highest-ever balance, you'd have to let it show as a balance on your reports, which might backfire with other lenders. Not to mention that it would take two months for the balance to display $0 again.

Really, they can be the most maddening CCC...

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Annoying indeed, if they were not my oldest tradeline (since 1982) I might consider closing my account with them.  Once upon a time -- back when they were considered extremely hard to get -- their customer service was truly superlative, especially for international travel.  Before ATM networks went international, I cashed many a check at AMEX offices outside the USA.  Now their service isn't what it used to be, and there are other ways to get cash abroad, and also I do far less international travel than I did two decades ago (ironically enough, now that I've got the money to stay in much nicer places than I did in the 1980s, I just don't have the time!).  So for me now AMEX is mostly a credential that I want to keep so I give them a certain amount of transactions every month and pay in full upon receipt of the statement.  But if AMEX had not raised my APR recently they would get much more transaction business from me: while the APR is for me only of symbolic value since I don't pay interest on CCs, I still want to reward Chase for keeping my APR below 6% and punish AMEX for ratejacking a customer who has been problem-free for decades.

[Anonymous]

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@haulingthescoreup wrote:
No, CC's (and lines of credit) with CL's of somewhere around $30K or more are not factored in.

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Thanks for the prompt replies. So if someone had a basic VISA with an $80K CL, only the first $30K would go towards overall utilization???

I avoid holding cards which don't report a CL. I love AMEX but would never pay a dime for use of their charge cards. Blue Cash is my "go to" card, both domestically and abroad. I realized about 2.4%  cashback return with it last year.

[Anonymous]

Hey, Lust, slumming at MyFico, eh?

It should be all or nothing - the 80K CL account should be completely ignored for utilization and the account would have a very minor influence on your score. I'm not sure if CCs get formally reclassified - I know that TU will classify a high-limit HELOC as "other".

From anecdotal evidence, my personal estimate is that TU's revolving account cutoff is about 40K and EQ/EX's cutoff is about 60K ...

Message Edited by Revike on 03-29-2009 01:47 PM

[smallfry]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Hey, Lust, slumming at MyFico, eh?

It should be all or nothing - the 80K CL account should be completely ignored for utilization and the account would have a very minor influence on your score. I'm not sure if CCs get formally reclassified - I know that TU will classify a high-limit HELOC as "other".

From anecdotal evidence, my personal estimate is that TU's revolving account cutoff is about 40K and EQ/EX's cutoff is about 60K ...

Message Edited by Revike on 03-29-2009 01:47 PM

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Ike TU ain't 40K it's 30K from my own experience.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

From anecdotal evidence, my personal estimate is tha EQ/EX's cutoff is about 60K ...

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Thanks. $60K seems high to me. In the instance which I cited above where myFICO mistakenly placed me at 5% utilization, I got nowhere near $60K in credit for a couple of my accounts with high CLs.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps there are two different cutoffs for CCs and HELOCs? All I know is that my 56K CL HELOC is counted as a revolving account on both EX and EQ and factored into the reported utilization, and the 31K and 35K CCs are reported identically on all three credit reports, with no indication from the TU Fico score that TU's formula is ignoring that combined 66K CL.

I'm going to pull EQ and TU Fico scores in a couple of days, and I'll try to dig up some old reports and scores to see if I can find any more clues. Maybe I've missed something ...

Smallfry, where were you seeing the indications that 30K is the TU cutoff?