topic Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits! in Credit Cards

Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

blindambition — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 15:10:01 GMT

Hey Guys,

I’m writing this as a warning, not to complain. I saw that this happened to someone else the other day. Just a heads up.

My statement on BCE closed on Friday. This morning I went from a $15,700 limit to $7900. I put an average of $400 a month. Every once in a while I’ll let a balance post, but I PIF.

I understand that I don’t need the limit, but a warning would be nice. I have 100% payment history on all cards. Nothing negative on reports. My FICO scores range from 771-776.

This has certainly left a bad taste in my mouth with Amex. I’m blind, with limited income, but budget. I don’t live above my means. I have $328 reporting between all my cards. The $7800 taken away from overall 31,000 limit hurts.

I won’t even bother to get it back. I think I’ll try for an increase with Chase. I have FU, Freedom, and CSP. Chase is my bank and has always shown me love. They get most my spend.

This is just to let you know that Amex is doing thorough assessments on accounts.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

CreditCuriosity — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 15:26:19 GMT

Usually banks dont do this for no reasons.. Have you been carrying balances on that card or other cards for prolonged periods of times and utilization increases etc? Certainly I wouldn't say no banks do this as Cap1 did some AA on some people that didn't put much use on their cards about 1.5 years back and I was one of them, although don't think this will be wide spread on Amex personally as they cater towards higher earners and I don't personally think they want to make their target demographic mad. Hopefully these are a few one off things. Hopefully you can answer the questions above such as any utilization changes upwards or carrying balances on other cards for prolonged periods of time, etc.. All these AA threads are very hard to figure out as usually it is all speculation as it is hard to make a wide spread claim until 100's not just a few posts came in. That is why the other thread was locked as it was alot of back and forth and started to go off topic and it was he said she said and people starting to be unfriendly. So with that said people that choose to post in this thread don't do the same or this thread will meet that same fate of the other Amex AA thread the other day. So keep it ON topics and FSR.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

Jetboy — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 15:46:27 GMT

@blindambition wrote:
Hey Guys,
I’m writing this as a warning, not to complain. I saw that this happened to someone else the other day. Just a heads up.
My statement on BCE closed on Friday. This morning I went from a $15,700 limit to $7900. I put an average of $400 a month. Every once in a while I’ll let a balance post, but I PIF.
I understand that I don’t need the limit, but a warning would be nice. I have 100% payment history on all cards. Nothing negative on reports. My FICO scores range from 771-776.
This has certainly left a bad taste in my mouth with Amex. I’m blind, with limited income, but budget. I don’t live above my means. I have $328 reporting between all my cards. The $7800 taken away from overall 31,000 limit hurts.
I won’t even bother to get it back. I think I’ll try for an increase with Chase. I have FU, Freedom, and CSP. Chase is my bank and has always shown me love. They get most my spend.
This is just to let you know that Amex is doing thorough assessments on accounts.

Thank you for the heads up. I saw that other post too. This may be the start of a trend with Amex this year.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 15:46:47 GMT

A few more such case, then there may be a trend coming.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

blindambition — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 15:51:45 GMT

I don’t carry balances. My current utilization was 2% before the decrease. The only thing different for spend lately was at Christmas. New tv and sound bar. My CSP has a $7000 limit. Statement closed with $600, but was paid right after statement closed.

as for utilization every month... fluctuates between 2-4%. My profile seems to do better with 2 cards showing balance. I don’t do AZEO. No more than $200 reports.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:15:31 GMT

If low monthly spending is indeed the only criteria, I am gonna embrace cut to my delta gold and every day by end of the year, lol. Not a big loss, i should have all my BT and SUB balance paid off by then, losing 15k CL doesn't change my UTI much.

Now the real question remains, which was not answered in the other thread before it was locked:

If ineed a minimum monthly spending is required to maintain a 10-15k CL, roughly how much is Amex really expecting you to spend to maintain that? Some poeple in the other thread seems to say 400/month is not enough, but nobody has any more informative numbers.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:18:22 GMT

If you are not using it, you can lose it. Good news Amex allows soft pull CLIs every 6 months. And you can usually double it first try.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

Gmood1 — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:20:15 GMT

Sorry to read this happened to you OP. What I'm not understanding is, why is it so difficult for some of you to allow your balances to report?

It's really not hard to do. I have Amex cards that go months without any use at all. The limits haven't been reduced as yet.

Let your balances post and then pay the bill. It's really that simple.

From what I've experienced over the last few years of obtaining CC's is, your credit limit exposure isn't necessarily tied to a single lender's spend. When they do AR's, their system is scanning your revolving spend across all of your CC accounts not related to them. If you're not reporting the spend. Those other lenders may see you as not a viable customer that uses CC's often.

For some reason, folks think they're accomplishing more by paying the balances before they report. I'm almost certain, the majority of the members here with fairly high exposure are allowing their balances to report. You'll always have a few outliers, but in general that seems to be the case in this forum IMHO and experience.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

Shadowfactor — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:30:48 GMT

@Gmood1 wrote:
Sorry to read this happened to you OP. What I'm not understanding is, why is it so difficult for some of you to allow your balances to report?
It's really not hard to do. I have Amex cards that go months without any use at all. The limits haven't been reduced as yet.
Let your balances post and then pay the bill. It's really that simple.

From what I've experienced over the last few years of obtaining CC's is, your credit limit exposure isn't necessarily tied to a single lender's spend. When they do AR's, their system is scanning your revolving spend across all of your CC accounts not related to them. If you're not reporting the spend. Those other lenders may see you as not a viable customer that uses CC's often.

For some reason, folks think they're accomplishing more by paying the balances before they report. I'm almost certain, the majority of the members here with fairly high exposure are allowing their balances to report. You'll always have a few outliers, but in general that seems to be the case in this forum IMHO and experience.

AZEO is pointless unless you are going to be applying for credit in the very near future, and even then it's only benefical for certain credit applications.

I haven't used my ED card that has a 19.8K limit for over 6 months. ( I need to use it) but I quite reguarly spend 3k to 8k a month on my other amex cards.

I havent seen any of the other threads on this topic but I'm not rushing out to spend on my ED card just to keep it's limit either.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

CreditCuriosity — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:40:05 GMT

Once again people and jumping to pure speculation which is fine right now as long as it is FSR. Just keep in mind only two reports of this happening and we don't know alot of other things such as DTI, income, etc and various other factors . two reports of this happening isn't a trend at all as plenty of us are still getting cli's and new amex's card and don't put a ton of spend on them. Healthy discussion is great, but once again certainly no trend of any sorts with only hearing of two people thus far with a CLD. Just keep it in prospective as certainly not fun for OP for this to happen to, but AA happens for many reasons and only a few at AMEX really know the real reason for it and it will never be shared with the public in these type of scenarios so without a huge sample size is it just guessing. I have 85k exposure with Amex and use them for 300-500ish a month without a thing happening to any of my cards thus far.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:55:36 GMT

@CreditCuriosity wrote:
Once again people and jumping to pure speculation which is fine right now as long as it is FSR. Just keep in mind only two reports of this happening and we don't know alot of other things such as DTI, income, etc and various other factors . two reports of this happening isn't a trend at all as plenty of us are still getting cli's and new amex's card and don't put a ton of spend on them. Healthy discussion is great, but once again certainly no trend of any sorts with only hearing of two people thus far with a CLD. Just keep it in prospective as certainly not fun for OP for this to happen to, but AA happens for many reasons and only a few at AMEX really know the real reason for it and it will never be shared with the public in these type of scenarios so without a huge sample size is it just guessing. I have 85k exposure with Amex and use them for 300-500ish a month without a thing happening to any of my cards thus far.

agreed, so far it still should be considered "incident" rather than "trend".

and btw, why not just combine the two thread, its the same thing and same question anyway.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

CreditCuriosity — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:59:36 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@CreditCuriosity wrote:
Once again people and jumping to pure speculation which is fine right now as long as it is FSR. Just keep in mind only two reports of this happening and we don't know alot of other things such as DTI, income, etc and various other factors . two reports of this happening isn't a trend at all as plenty of us are still getting cli's and new amex's card and don't put a ton of spend on them. Healthy discussion is great, but once again certainly no trend of any sorts with only hearing of two people thus far with a CLD. Just keep it in prospective as certainly not fun for OP for this to happen to, but AA happens for many reasons and only a few at AMEX really know the real reason for it and it will never be shared with the public in these type of scenarios so without a huge sample size is it just guessing. I have 85k exposure with Amex and use them for 300-500ish a month without a thing happening to any of my cards thus far.
agreed, so far it still should be considered "incident" rather than "trend".

and btw, why not just combine the two thread, its the same thing and same question anyway.

Cause other thread is locked due to my first post in this one as it veered off course and people weren't being to friendly any more. So that one will remain locked.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 17:44:10 GMT

I've only got one Amex card (BCE) with a $55k limit and if it sees $300-$400 in spend during any given cycle that's a lot. With Freedom and Discover giving 5% back on gas and groceries this quarter, my BCE was rendered completely useless. So, it's probably going to see 3 months of no use, then in April it will go back to my grocery card and again start seeing several hundred bucks again.

Anyway, my spend is minimal, so if anyone is perfect to receive a CLD on a ridiculously high unnecessary limit it will be me.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

PDXoriginal — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 18:25:07 GMT

The days of free flowing credit are coming to an end. Companies started tightening their belts last year and it is only going to continue. People are getting behind and they don't want a repeat of 2008, they are identifiying potential loss points and shrinking them.

Banks are going to look at overall avalible credit, and the number of open cards. If you are not utilizing your avalibe credit or can demonstrate you are a good "candidate", they are going to remove that potential loss point.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

HeavenOhio — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 18:26:42 GMT

@blindambition, how long have you had this card? What was your starting limit? Approximately when was your last CLI? What's the highest amount that you recall spending in any given month?

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

kdm31091 — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 18:28:17 GMT

The bottom line is there is no business reason for a bank to extend, say, a 30k limit, if you are only going to spend $500 a month on the card. As blogs and forums have popularized things like Amex 3x CLI, there's relatively a lot of people out there with inflated limits. Enough that CLDs aren't out of the queston as banks try to cut back. With such low spend, a 5 or 10k limit is more "reasonable".

I get it, as my Magnet has a large limit that I don't approach and same with my Discover. I wouldn't be shocked if they cut the limits, and frankly it really wouldn't hurt my utilization and I never intend to spend anywhere near that much anyway.

And as someone else mentioned, sometimes it can be detrimental to be reporting 0 balance on nearly every card you have. It makes it appear to creditors you are not using your cards, so why should they continue to extend such large, unused limits? I've played with AZEO and found it makes only an immaterial difference in my score if anything, certainly not enough to bump me down a bracket or anything, so why stress over doing it?

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

wasCB14 — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 18:30:08 GMT

My $13k CL BBP has $38.5k of pending and posted transactions. Hopefully that's enough use to avoid a CLD.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

HeavenOhio — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 18:38:55 GMT

@kdm31091 wrote:
The bottom line is there is no business reason for a bank to extend, say, a 30k limit, if you are only going to spend $500 a month on the card.

Of course that makes sense. And it makes sense to mention it in CLD threads.

But it hasn't been characteristic of AMEX to CLD for low usage. As a matter of fact, they keep extending CLIs to people with low usage, and I don't recall low usage being used as a denial reason.

If the CLDs continue, we need to figure out what might be triggering them, i.e. what actually constituted low usage in AMEX's eyes. When Capital One started CLD-ing, it was really easy to figure out the spending level and profile characteristics that it took to trigger them. I wouldn't expect AMEX or anyone else to be that easy.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

Revelate — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 18:45:00 GMT

No changes in my BCE, admittedly it got left at 9k but it hasn’t been swiped in I don’t know how long. Close to ever actually when I opened it up Jan 2013 for the small backdate when that was a thing.

My Zync has a recurring 10 buck donation to the local NPR station, I have always assumed that would keep it open and I have a small SP SCP too from a few years ago that likewise doesn’t get much play.

If Amex is really trying to tighten things up, my BCE limit should be cut to 1-2k rationally since it is clear Amex is not my primary lender.

Will wait and see, if I lose it well I wasn’t using it anyway, but I don’t think the sky is falling just yet.

Re: Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

AverageJoesCredit — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 18:52:38 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
If you are not using it, you can lose it. Good news Amex allows soft pull CLIs every 6 months. And you can usually double it first try.

Not really good news in that if you had a 15k line that was decreased for limited use, why would Amex give you back that limit or even better, why would someone try and get more cli only for it to be taken away?