Amex Decreasing Unused Limits!

[Anonymous]

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@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.

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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.

[CreditCuriosity]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@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.

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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.

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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.  

[Anonymous]

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. 

[PDXoriginal]

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.

[HeavenOhio]

@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?

[kdm31091]

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?

[wasCB14]

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

[HeavenOhio]

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@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.

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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.

[Revelate]

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.

[AverageJoesCredit]

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@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.

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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?