topic Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason! in Credit Cards

Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:35:35 GMT

For the 6.5 years I was with them, I've had no problem. Never over the limit; never late. For some reason today I received a letter from them saying that they are closing my account. Their reason is: "Too many bank or national revolving accounts". I only have a total of 6 cards, but Citi card had the highest CL (1/3 of all my credit limit). The only reason I kept this card was because of the limit; their rate was at 17.99%. I'm glad I PIF every month and owe them only $26. I hope this doesn't hurt my score. Did anyone ever had this problem?

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

SCF — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:41:34 GMT

From what I've been reading here, small consolation that it is, you are far from the only person experiencing AA from big banks even though it may not be warranted by your credit report.

As long as you keep your utilization down, this shouldn't impact your score too heavily. The account should stay on your reports for around 10 years and continue to contribute to your AAoA, so just make sure the combined balanaces on your other cards are low compared to your reduced overall CL and you should be fine.

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:58:35 GMT

How old is your credit flie , to me the only reason to close an account just cause having 6 credit crds as long there not all max out would a very young credit file

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

haulingthescoreup — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:00:46 GMT

Wow, this is a whole new ugly twist. As if the 29.99% APR wasn't bad enough, now they're closing accounts for no particular reason? Wow.

Citi must really not want business from everyday consumers any more. ~~Good thing that we haven't done them any favors lately~~ --whoops, my bad, I forgot that we taxpayers saved their rear ends.

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:23:12 GMT

i've had this account for 6.5 years... always in good standing... only time i've (near maxed out) was 2-3 years ago. After I paid it off, I've always kept it between 5-15% util; PIF every month. Been like this for more than a year.

Funny thing: I checked my account just now... and there's a new popup link saying that I should pay the rest of my account off by the due date, otherwise I might get the 29.99% APR. So I paid it off...

My overall util went up from 3-4% to 6-7%.

Message Edited by valenjimmo on 10-21-2009 09:23 PM

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:17:40 GMT

haulingthescoreup wrote: Citi must really not want business from everyday consumers any more.

Someone had posted in another thread a week or two ago that Citi announced it's planning to focus its business on affluent customers, while eliminating many branch banking locations outside of metro areas.

I'll edit my post to include a link (if I can find it, of course!)

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:42:06 GMT

new strategy?

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=creditcard&message.id=184372&query.id=236296#M184372

Message Edited by valenjimmo on 10-22-2009 08:42 AM

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

pattycake — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:47:31 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
new strategy?
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=creditcard&message.id=184372&query.id=236296#M184372
Message Edited by valenjimmo on 10-22-2009 08:42 AM

Wow - I make six figures, guess they don't want my business!

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

DI — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:50:39 GMT

Having too much revolving credit is a reason to be decline for credit off the top. One is certainly not immune from an account closure after the bank determined one accumulated a plethora of accounts after being approved.

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

DI — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:26:47 GMT

@pattycake wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
new strategy?
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=creditcard&message.id=184372&query.id=236296#M184372
Message Edited by valenjimmo on 10-22-2009 08:42 AM
Wow - I make six figures, guess they don't want my business!

People who have six figure income also see their homes get foreclosed, have debt up to the eyeball and file BK.

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Lel — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:28:40 GMT

This was posted over in Credit in the News a few days ago:

Citi starts closing Mastercards without warning

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:45:14 GMT

+1 Di!

OP – I’m sorry this happened to you. I’m betting you’re feeling pretty blindsided. If it’s as cold where you are today as it is here, I would bring you a steamy hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows and drizzle the whole thing with Hershey’s syrup. Yum.

It was really really good of you to post – I think this is something we lose track of. Especially on these (very helpful) forums – sometimes we’re overwhelmed by posters with many cards and it seems fine – no one closed them, right????

But the reality is, as Di points out, “Too many bank or national revolving accounts” is a valid reason. It’s one of the blasted FICO codes (Code #4 in EQ and EXP) and it’s always been in play. This is why I like to pull my reports from myfico.com/12 – it shows you all 4 of your negative codes, so you’re less likely to be blindsided when a lender pulls them and sees something you didn’t even know was there.

What’s the magic number of open bank or national revolving accounts? Well, we know we need one (and one is sufficient for scoring) for FICO. I guess I’d want more, just in case that one bank card became twiddle-bopped somehow. I’m not sure how many of your cards are bank cards, but that would be a data point for the rest of us to learn from. And I guess your story can help others know what actions they might consider with their own accounts.

Some FICO experts recommend that you have no more than 10 total open accounts for an 800 score. (That includes the bank or national revolving accounts plus mortgages, auto loans, education loans, other credit cards and lines of credit, even including overdraft accounts).

SCF is missing the point when he says that it “may not be warranted by your credit report.” The credit report (which reported FICO Code #4) is exactly what warranted their actions.

Good luck to you valenjimmo! I’m glad you’ve kept your utilization low and this will have a minimal impact. Thanks for posting – this is really helpful information for the rest of us and we needed to see it – it’s a wake-up call for sure. Now, to deliver this yummy cup of hot chocolate……….

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:58:18 GMT

OP, which CITI card do you have? CITI has been closing co-branded gasoline credit cards this past week.

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:54:07 GMT

Thanks for all the posts...and great article... (glad I'm not the only one experiencing this)

I'm not too worried about the closure since I don't owe them any money, but I was surprised when I tried to make a purchase last week for $20 and it got rejected. I went online and nothing seemed wrong with the account. I think their reason is [bull] because I only have 6 revolving accounts and one student loan. I used to have 20+ accounts (mostly department store cards) roughly 2 years ago, but last year I took the courage to cancel more than half of those accounts (lost more than half my credit limit). My EQ score took a plunge because I didn't understand how the UTIL rate worked; but since then my score started to improve.

Also, my report shoud look pretty clean this 2 months. My inquiries should be removed (over a year since my last inquiry), no late payment, NOW 6-7% UTIL.

Hope my score will go up soon (trying to buy my first home with my wife ) Took me 11 months to raise 105 pts for EQ.

Message Edited by valenjimmo on 10-22-2009 10:54 AM

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:03:48 GMT

Congrats on your great score increase - and your upcoming house-hunting!

@Anonymous wrote:
I only have 6 revolving accounts

How many of your six revolving accounts are bank/national credit card company?

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:10:43 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
new strategy?
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=creditcard&message.id=184372&query.id=236296#M184372
Message Edited by valenjimmo on 10-22-2009 08:42 AM

Thanks for finding that link, valenjimmo! I couldn't locate the darn thing, but I remembered the subject matter. (wow, it was from last month...thought it was from last week!)

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:37:15 GMT

I still have 2 from chase (amazon and WAMU), capital one, american express, and discover.

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:14:54 GMT

Thanks valenjimmo.

So 6 bank/national revolving accounts is enough to trigger the FICO (#4 "Too many bank or national revolving accounts") button - in this case.

(This category includes HELOC's and personal lines of credit - but it doesn't look like you have those).

And CITI cares - at least at this point.

Well, the good news is that CITI popped you down to Five accounts!

So you probably won't see the same damage again. (Unless you add another bank/national revolving account and get up to six again).......

(I'm at a BIG 1 bank account - but I'm scurrying off to count DH accounts.........).

Hey -- maybe you'll see a score increase if five accounts is under the radar and no longer irritates the FICO gods!

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:37:35 GMT

I'm not sure if this falls into a new thread... but let's say if this account closure causes another bank like AE (been 9.5 yrs with them) to close my card, what can I do to protect it with that account having the longest credit history? Am I going to lose my credit history or is it going to stay on my record?

The reason I ask is because I read some other articles and the author pointed out that an account closure can affect the overall age of the accounts. Does that mean that I should start closing credit cards opened in 2007-2008 to lengthen the average account age?

Re: Citibank closed my account for no reason!

haulingthescoreup — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:50:31 GMT

No, no, no. There's a lot of ignorance out there about the effect of account closures, and unfortunately, people write articles about this, not understanding how it works.

Closed accounts generally stay on your records for 10 years, and they are counted in your AAoA (and as your oldest account, if they are) as long as they're there. Equifax has developed a nasty habit of losing closed accounts early, but EX and TU generally keep them the full 10 years and sometimes longer.

So if a bank closes your account, it will NOT affect your history until 10 years or so go by.

Also, if someone goes on an app spree, sees the AAoA plummet, and develops buyer's remorse, closing these new accounts won't help. They're still there on your reports, open or closed, dragging down your AAoA.

For more discussion on this, please read fused's "Closing Credit Cards" linked in my siggy below.