topic Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP in Credit Cards

SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Jesi — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 13:58:30 GMT

Long story short I missed a payment on my Synchrony Gap card. My balance is $471 and I missed a payment of $25 on March 8th due to a horrible wind storm a tree fell in my yard and knocked my power out for 6 days. I couldn't move my car for 3 and the closest Gap is over an hour away. There was nothing that could be done. I got a late fee, no big deal. I also noticed that my credit line 8 days later, on March 16th, was lowered to $490. That's not even a number that makes any sense and I KNOW it's because of the account being late. The thing that's aggravating is now my credit score has now decreased quite a bit because my card is now nearly maxed out. They are literally ruining my credit at this point. I called to find out why it was decreased and all they did was remove the late fee, which I wasn't even trying to do. The letter that says why my credit was decreased is vague and all of the reasons were already there when I got the Gap card almost a year ago. "Delinquent account" which is my car loan that was late over 2 years ago, etc. Nothing is new or different, just one late fee, and I've never been late before. I'm disgusted and appalled at this point how I can be treated like a criminal and have my credit ruined over a payment that was only a week late, which wasn't my fault to begin with.

I tried calling credit solutions, I just keep getting bounced around and even getting some of the same representatives and they all say "there's nothing we can do" and that the account was not decreased due to the late payment. If that was the case my 15 other Synchrony cards that all have $5,000 and higher limits would have also been decreased. It's VERY obvious why this was decreased and it would have been lowered to some more even like $500, not $490, that was their way of making my account not over the limit but decreased enough to give me no available credit. I would honestly close the account but I don't have $500 to pay it off today, I also don't want to close it with such a tiny credit limit, but it's ruining my credit now and I was trying to buy a house this summer. I'm sick to my stomach and trying not to vomit because I'm so upset about this. My usage has now also gone WAY up due to the card showing as being basically maxed out. Is there anyone else I can call, I don't know a ton about contacting anyone other than customer service or credit solutions and they all tell me there's no one I can call and nothing anyone can do. I just don't believe that to be true.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Discover2016 — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 14:12:32 GMT

Sorry to hear that they CLD'd you, one thing to remember is that they are not ruining your credit, as soon as that balance is paid off your score will return to where it was before.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Discover2016 — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 14:15:51 GMT

What other accounts do you have that are not synchrony? Maybe you can BT that balance to another card?

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 14:17:32 GMT

This is not meant to irritate you but I just had to say it in regards to your comment of "nothing could be done." There are numerous things you could have done. I'd walk through hot coals to make my payment on time if came down to it.

The other thing, if you have 15 other cards with 5k limits then a maxed out $500 card isn't going to hurt you. Did they report the late payment?

I would just find a way to pay it or bt it and close the account.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Dalmus — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 14:34:40 GMT

Sorry that happened, OP.

Often, a creditor will lower your available credit to just above your current balance, so that would explain why it's an "odd" number like $490.

The late payment probably triggered a FR on that particular card, and an analyst with a different set of guidelines or having a bad day looked at your account and decided to slash it.

Now you know better... Synch is a little touchy sometimes! Could you have paid by phone? Might have been a fee involved, but that's always better than taking a late!

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 14:47:34 GMT

I do have to ask whether you couldn't have logged on to your account from another device if you have one (phone, tablet or laptop) from a place with a working connection to pay that bill?

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Jesi — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 15:05:23 GMT

Sorry, my power was knocked out for 6 days and my car was blocked in for 3. I certainly wasn't going to "walk through hot coals" over a $25 payment, I had no idea they would be so testy over a $25 payment. I was happy to pay the late fee as my bill wasn't paid but that was absolutely no reason to decrease my $5000 credit limit to $490, that's laughable and I'm so irritated by it I'm pay it off as soon as I can and not using it anymore. Thankfully I hardly shop at Gap but did a lot of my Christmas clothing shopping for the family there this year. If I do that in the future I'll just use another card.

To answer about balance transfers no, the credit cards I have are all retail cards with really high limits, $5000 to $8000 limits. The only "real" credit cards I have are Capital One and Credit One, really small limits, not even over $1,000 and they won't give me increases. I can't get cards with Discover or Citi or anything like that, none of them will approve me and I've never had any of them in my life. I'm stuck in a rut apparently, I posted about it a few weeks ago and no one responded. I would love to get a consolidation loan or something to lump all of the real credit cards together to get them clear of balances in hopes that I'll be able to actually get a card other than Capital One but got no insight about it.

Seems the thing haunting us is a car loan we got late on 18 months ago due to my husband's company that he worked for closing, we fell behind and didn't qualify for any help until he was out of work for almost 2 months and even by then, the amount of money we were getting wasn't enough to cover the bills so the car payment started to get behind, we made regular payments but because we got behind they were showing as late. It's First Investors who is the WORST, and now we're in an upside down loan on that car so no one will refinance either. Horrible interest rate and the late payments on that are what are hurting us... Oddly almost all of my credit cards with the high limits were all acquired after the car loan debacle so that's why I don't believe their generic letter of why my Gap card was decreased because all of the reasons given for the decrease were showing on my credit report when they gave it to me initially and increased up to $5,000 in the first place.

I know my score will go up but that still doesn't help my utilization right now, I'm fearful that now with my utilization showing at nearly $100 on this card and my credit card usage on credit karma has gone up because of it basically showing as maxed I'm afraid that other cards will decrease in limit because that's what Synchrony is giving as a reason they do a "review" every 3 to 6 months and decrease people's limits. If that IS true then they're going to decrease more, which hardly any of my retail cards have any balance but it still can't be good that my cards are all decreasing. I also have a high number of inquiries from getting all of these cards and requesting credit limit increases, some gave me hard pulls for that.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Jesi — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 15:11:33 GMT

Again, I don't live near any family, my power was knocked out for 6 days, I was more concerned with saving the food we had in the fridge and keeping my pets and children from dying in the cold, it was still winter and even though it's spring now, here in the Buffalo, NY area, it's freezing still. I wasn't going to walk in a tundra 10 miles to I don't know, a library just to pay a $25 credit card payment. Payphones also no longer exist. I planned on just paying the fee and worrying about it when I had power again. I mean it was national news that the northeast dealt with this and our lovely politicians sent all of our plow people to NYC to take care of them instead of us. We got slammed with this wind storm and then 2 days later we got pounded with snow, which is no big deal since we're Buffalonians, but we still do need plows and they weren't plowing at all. So once the tree and debris was removed there were travel warnings and bans, the malls were all closed on the following Monday and Tuesday because of the snow so I couldn't have even driven to a Gap store at that point to pay it. My only option was phone which was dead due to no power. I'm just grateful that the house and car weren't damaged badly enough to completely ruin my life, thank god for insurance. I could see if this was several months late but it was my first late, ever, and it was $25 which seems incredibly meager to me and silly to decrease the thousands I had to less than half of $1,000 over it.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

SecretAzure — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 15:34:37 GMT

@Jesi wrote:
Again, I don't live near any family, my power was knocked out for 6 days, I was more concerned with saving the food we had in the fridge and keeping my pets and children from dying in the cold, it was still winter and even though it's spring now, here in the Buffalo, NY area, it's freezing still. I wasn't going to walk in a tundra 10 miles to I don't know, a library just to pay a $25 credit card payment. Payphones also no longer exist. I planned on just paying the fee and worrying about it when I had power again. I mean it was national news that the northeast dealt with this and our lovely politicians sent all of our plow people to NYC to take care of them instead of us. We got slammed with this wind storm and then 2 days later we got pounded with snow, which is no big deal since we're Buffalonians, but we still do need plows and they weren't plowing at all. So once the tree and debris was removed there were travel warnings and bans, the malls were all closed on the following Monday and Tuesday because of the snow so I couldn't have even driven to a Gap store at that point to pay it. My only option was phone which was dead due to no power. I'm just grateful that the house and car weren't damaged badly enough to completely ruin my life, thank god for insurance. I could see if this was several months late but it was my first late, ever, and it was $25 which seems incredibly meager to me and silly to decrease the thousands I had to less than half of $1,000 over it.

Maybe this isn't the answer you're looking for...if you're even looking for an answer at this point...so please take it as a suggestion and not a criticism. You should invest in a car charger for your phone. This is a horribly inefficient way to charge your phone (as you would waste a lot of gas to give a phone power) but having a charged cell phone can save your life...and in this case, maybe even your credit limit. You could have just turned your car on for 5 minutes, logged on (assuming you have reception), and paid. But I would think a car phone charger would be a "just in case" item, not something you'd get for this one purpose.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Jesi — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 15:44:59 GMT

Yeah I have a car charger, I guess I should invest in hulk hands to get the tree and power lines off of my car next time too.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Jesi — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 15:49:54 GMT

Seems pretty ignorant to me to risk my life to pay a $25 bill and I'm 100% sure none of you would have either. When there's trees and power lines falling down all over the city and the mayor is closing schools, stores, and telling everyone to stay inside, it would not be wise to sit in a vehicle making a phone call to pay a $25 credit card bill.

I'd prefer to stay on topic and stop being belittled over petty things. I don't judge the people that have ruined their credit by making bad choices, if they ask for help on here I help them, if I can't help, I move on, I don't ask them why they rang up several credit cards and then filed bankruptcy. If you have information on who I can speak with at Synchrony, I'll gratefully take it. Otherwise, I'm sure the moderators and I as well don't see the point in commenting on the woulda coulda shoulda's. It was a life threatening situation. It was a $25 payment. Sorry I took the smart road and wasn't trying to win a Darwin Award.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

happypill — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 15:57:46 GMT

Your score will recover as soon as you get the util down on that card. You should probably do it sooner rather than later, before the low score starts impacting your other cards and a vicious cycle starts.

If you have 15 cards with Synchrony that's too many and they are very sensitive so be careful. Let's be honest, $471 is not a lot of money if you have a pile of other cards with $5k+ limits. You need to pay it off completely if possible because they are likely balance chasing you at this point (you can guess by the odd limit they set). If you can't pay it off, BT it to another card with a higher limit.

The utilization impact on your score is a snapshot in time, so as soon as you pay it down your score will recover. This is really a minor problem with a very straightforward solution. Getting hysterical isn't going to change anything. Your choices are to pay it down or BT.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

SecretAzure — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 16:07:28 GMT

@Jesi wrote:
Again, I don't live near any family, my power was knocked out for 6 days, I was more concerned with saving the food we had in the fridge and keeping my pets and children from dying in the cold, it was still winter and even though it's spring now, here in the Buffalo, NY area, it's freezing still. I wasn't going to walk in a tundra 10 miles to I don't know, a library just to pay a $25 credit card payment. Payphones also no longer exist. I planned on just paying the fee and worrying about it when I had power again. I mean it was national news that the northeast dealt with this and our lovely politicians sent all of our plow people to NYC to take care of them instead of us. We got slammed with this wind storm and then 2 days later we got pounded with snow, which is no big deal since we're Buffalonians, but we still do need plows and they weren't plowing at all. So once the tree and debris was removed there were travel warnings and bans, the malls were all closed on the following Monday and Tuesday because of the snow so I couldn't have even driven to a Gap store at that point to pay it. My only option was phone which was dead due to no power. I'm just grateful that the house and car weren't damaged badly enough to completely ruin my life, thank god for insurance. I could see if this was several months late but it was my first late, ever, and it was $25 which seems incredibly meager to me and silly to decrease the thousands I had to less than half of $1,000 over it.

Well if you're just going to be an arse to everyone you might as well get treated like one. You planned on paying late. You made your decision and so your score drops and so does your credit limit. In the grand scheme of things, this really doesn't matter much if you have many other cards. You didn't risk your life for this...I don't think anyone was asking you to. We are just giving suggestions and ideas based off of the limited knowledge we had. When you post to a public forum don't expect everyones' answers to be to your liking.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 16:08:49 GMT

Fifteen Synchrony cards?!

I agree with happypill - that's way too many. In fact, having 15 cards at all is probably too many, but then I'm playing it conservatively these days when it comes to credit, having learned some hard lessons from my past mistakes. I only have one Synchrony card (Amazon Store Card), because I buy a lot of stuff there; I was considering getting CareCredit (also Synchrony) but decided against it because I've seen too many negative stories about that card here and elsewhere.

But we're really not talking about me. I do understand that you faced serious issues with your power being off for 6 days and the nearest Gap store where you could pay being an hour away, but again, I have to ask; wasn't there any other way you could have gotten online - gone to a friend (I understand you have no family living nearby) or neighbor who did have electricity and was willing to let you log on to their computer or power up to use your own device, or done the payment from work if you had access to a computer there and your work wasn't too sticky about personal use? I genuinely am having a hard time seeing how you had no alternatives whatever in this situation.

P.S. I also understand you're upset and under stress, but there's no need to be snippy with people who are trying to help you...

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 16:15:38 GMT

If i am in this situatuation ,this is what i would like to hear. RELAX. relax and relax. Take a deep breath. Its just a credit report and no matter how it looks its certainly NOT worth creating immense stress within yourself. You & your peace of mind is more valuable than some report or score. Always remember what is important . Is it worth putting your mind through so much stress over an incident that could not be controlled? You did all you could. We have designed a system where credit report matters so much that one late payment due unavoidable reasons can create such problems for one's living then what does that tell us? Time to change such extreme systems. Nothing is worth subjecting oneself to stress or suffering. First step is to accept what is . Fine you could not control everything here and you did your best ,get yourself off the hook here. Then we have the whole credit and banking system designed to freak out at one late payment . This is something that will change as we refuse to fall under stress and begin to discover new ways of commerce. But right now play with in the system. Accept what is . If the score drops for a few days so what? Time to learn ways to be more independent and not dependent on a credit system to dictate how we live our lives. It is what it is. And it was meant to be otherwise it would not have happened . Do what you can and let go of what you cant control at the moment. Continue to make your payments after few months they may increase your limit. If not dont use that card often. My point is use the credit system but not let it control how you feel. Nothing is worth loosing one's peace of mind.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 16:23:53 GMT

First of all I am glad that your family and pets are all ok. That is important. And sorry that you had to go through such difficult situation with power outage and all. And RELAX. relax and relax. Take a deep breath. Its just a credit report and no matter how it looks its certainly NOT worth creating immense stress within yourself. You & your peace of mind is more valuable than some report or score. Always remember what is important . Is it worth putting your mind through so much stress over an incident that could not be controlled? You did all you could. We have designed a system where credit report matters so much that one late payment due unavoidable reasons can create such problems for one's living then what does that tell us? Time to change such extreme systems. Nothing is worth subjecting oneself to stress or suffering. First step is to accept what is . Fine you could not control everything here and you did your best ,get yourself off the hook here. Then we have the whole credit and banking system designed to freak out at one late payment . This is something that will change as we refuse to fall under stress and begin to discover new ways of commerce. But right now play with in the system. Accept what is . If the score drops for a few days so what? Time to learn ways to be more independent and not dependent on a credit system to dictate how we live our lives. It is what it is. And it was meant to be otherwise it would not have happened . Do what you can and let go of what you cant control at the moment. Continue to make your payments after few months they may increase your limit. If not dont use that card often. My point is use the credit system but not let it control how you feel. Nothing is worth loosing one's peace of mind.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 16:41:06 GMT

Sorry to hear this happened to you, Jesi. I know it can be upsetting when you've been a good customer.

Unfortunately, Synchrony has been cutting credit limits for all sorts of reasons such as non-use of the cardfor as few as 3-4 months. You may also have read in the forums that they have been sending out a lot of blue envelopes as well.

I have never seen a single situation of a person beong able to call Synchrony and have their credit limits restored. Nor have I seen an EO that they will ever let a customer speak with.

I don't think there is any option to pursue directly with Synchrony. Perhaps another suggestion would be a personal loan ( may be at a very high interest rate if your FICO is low), or borrowing from a family member or friend. Another suggestion may be to take on a second job or a temporary job for a few months to help pay that amount down.

Good luck and hope all is better after the storm now.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 16:45:16 GMT

I do agree with happypill that 15 Synchrony cards is a lot, and Synchrony is known to be very sensitive.

It may be worth closing a few of those cards in order to stay a bit low on the radar screen.

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Jesi — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 16:56:05 GMT

Re: SEVERE credit limit decrease HELP

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 16:48:53 GMT

There is not any reason to be rude, and there are people on here trying to help you.