Asked Discover for cli got a DECREASE!!

[Anonymous]

sorry.. have not updated my signature info in a while... basically:  I JUST UPDATED MY SIGNATURE...

Discover dropped me from $2700 to $500

if i close the 3 sub primes i want to close they would be

First Premier  $400

First Premier  $100

Milestone  $300

These were cards i used to rebuild and all at zero right now..

[SBR249]

I do believe that the loan itself likely factored into Discover's AA. Basically what they see on your CR is that you are shuffling around debt without reducing total debt. You likely also incurred HP from the truck refi which likely hit your score. So to the lender, it looks like you may be freeing up room on your CCs possibly to spend more. So I'm not surprised that Discover's UW algorithm might try to cut you off before you could run up more CC balances. I'm not saying that was your intention, but I'm sure those UW algorithms are written to take into account worst case scenarios rather than to give borrowers the benefit of the doubt. 

As for what happens now. I'd say the loan was a good idea (despite how lenders may view it) if you are planning to pay off your balance without incurring more debt. So priority 1 should be to manage your cashflow to dedicate as much as you can to paying off the balances you already have.

Once you are chugging along with paying down your debt, on the CC front, I'd start thinking about culling your portfolio. Right now you have lots of small limit store cards. I don't know if you use those limits but lenders will certainly see them. We are now in an economic environment where lenders are no longer as generous with extending credit as in the years past and I have always been of the opinion that having too much credit on cards that you don't use can prevent you from getting cards or bigger limits that you will use. So my advice is to consolidate and cull. You currently have something like 19 cards or store credit lines of which at least half are store cards. My suggestion is to narrow down to at most half that centering on cards that you use the most. Don't worry about utilization too much, it has no memory and you can always pay down as you spend. Once you've given yourself some headroom in credit, then you can target lenders like AmEx, Disco, Synchrony that are more generous with limits. As a bonus, having low limits will act as another check to stop yourself from getting into trouble with balances again. 

[Anonymous]

SBR that was exactly my plan and the readon i studied my finances for a while was to do exactly the culling of sub prime cards etc... obviously i should not have asked for increase, but then again it was probably going to happen... i am just glad i was able to reduce my cc debt to 6%... Bummed though my disco got whacked in the process... oh well... onward and upward !

[Anonymous]

Something like this happened to me a few years ago -- maybe 6 or 7 -- when I was mid-recovery mode with my overall credit.. My two amex cards were auto-CLDed (I didn't ask for a CLI) out of the blue from then $2,500 and $3,000 each to $1,000 each... and the languagage on the letters was very similar to yours...

What I did do was call Amex (which their letter offered me to do).. We discussed the matter and a fair compromise was reached .. Initially they wanted to see the util% on two of my rebuilder cards come down to sub 40% range... but I countered that those cards had limits of $1,000 and $1,500, therefore it didn't take a whole lot of balance to put them into the 70% to 80% util range which is what Amex saw.. So, the "deal" was I agreed to pay down an aggregate of $1,000 between these two cards - they asked that I split the paydown between as $500 and $500, between the two card--  within the next 90 days and so long as nothing else in my CR didn't adversely change, Amex would restore my previous CLs on both cards.. They sent me a letter outlining this agreement too.

I met that paydown in 2 momths and called Amex back and referenced the letter and our deal. In 24hrs they had restored my previous CLs as agreed..

So.. It might be possible to come to some form of a deal with Discover, especially if you have a good story to tell AND can take some form of action that DISC can/will see on your CL. In turn they may be willing to reinstate you in full.. Can't hurt to try.

[soxfaininfl]

My wife had a 10K limit on a Amex card. I don't remember which one it was. She made a payment of slightly more than 8k to pay it down. The next day they lowered her limit to 2k. When she called to find out why, they stated with was due to her other credit account balances were high. She didn't even ask for a CLI, so be aware that some creditors do this without notice. 

[BearsCubsOtters]

You refinanced your truck and got cash out? Where did this cash come from? Was it a loan? Did you allow the cards that you paid off to report before the CLI request? A refinanced car loan is a new loan and if the cash to pay off cards was a personal loan (also new) than Discover saw that as excessive credit seeking and a possible signal that you are having financial difficulty. Even if that isn't true, that is what their computer models see. 

Some of you may not remember 2009-2011 when BofA would take any contact with a customer for an on-the-spot review of their account. One lady called to request a replacement card and ended up having her BofA accounts closed. Amex was closing cards and even offering people money to close their cards.

While 2019 is not 2009, the economy is rocky and many are calling for a recession within the next year. My point: people should tread carefully with credit. 

It looks like you got a little overconfident with your one and only prime/good creditor and they did not like something they saw. My opinion is that you should wait until your credit bureaus update with the cards paid in full and then ask for the CLI at that point. 

[Anonymous]

Flyer, thank you for the advice... I will definitely use that !!  It definitely does not hurt to call and discuss...  I guess I will give it a few days... All of the 12k payments have not posted yet and updated to my credit profile... when this is all said and done, i am dropping with from 84% overall usage of credit usage to about 45%...  Just frustrating ...  I definitely know i ran up my cards and credit.. part of it was rebuilding and the other part was circumstance of moving to another state and actually paying off a very very very large hospital bill from a heart attack with ZERO insurance.... I have actually paid that all off, which is why I was taking a large hard look the past couple of weeks and now have breathing room...

[Anonymous]

Yes.. Spot on Bears now that I am sitting back and looking at their reasoning ...  The cash out went to pay credit cards down directly...  Definitely thought I was making a good move with the lower apr of 6% and my intentions are just to do that... Thought that i could get a little bump up on my one Disco in order to justify closing 3 junkie cards (although, my goal is get to rid of 7 overall if not more slowly) ...  Oh, I definitely remember the 08-09 experiences with AmEx and BofA as I was a causuality of that.  Just closed the accounts (and marriage) paid off and moved on to rebuild starting in 16.  I did not burn anyone at all.  Just paid the accounts to zero .    

Guess I expect that from AmEx and BofA, not Discover.  Actually only about 4k of the 12k pay offs have posted so far.   When I got the loan i was at 84% overall utilization across the board.  The loan will pay me down to about 47%.  Saves me about 1200 a month which will go to paying off the remaining 10k within 9 months (that was my overall plan).

[Anonymous]

Bears... Sorry just reread your post...

YES, it was a refi at my credit union.. they paid the cards directly... so 1st thing reporting was my NEW LOAN, then the old loan being paid off....  The cards that are being reported are coming in slowly... so far only 4k of the 12k has reported...

Your question:

Did you allow the cards that you paid off to report before the CLI request?    No !!!  And that was a huge mistake on my part :-(  I got ahead of myself.. Wanted to see if I could get at least 1k bump so I could close 2 junk cards....  Just complete misfiring on my part...

[Anonymous]

How old and what is your most recent negative on your reports?