Lowes / GEMB slashed my credit line to practically $0...

[jonathanw84]

Woke up this morning and checked my accounts like I do every morning to find that Lowes / GEMB slashed my credit line from $7400 to $224

The card has had a $0 balance for a while and I haven't used it for over a year, but I didn't want that kind of thing showing up on a credit report. So I called in and got transferred around, and was even told that I would have to reapply to get my card back at that limit. Finally, I got transferred to the under writing department and after a soft pull, they reinstated it to the $7400 limit.

Lesson learned - do NOT let your store cards sit dormant for that long. I plan on making a small purchase there at least once every 6 months (and of course when I need new appliances, home accessories, etc) that way they can see that I do use the card.

[JayRizzo]

There's at least one posting per week from someone asking what to do about a store card they've had for years and most of the posting responses are:  At least every 6 months or so, make a small purchase on your card to keep it active.  Not sure how often you visit the forum, but that info is out here pretty often.

[jonathanw84]

I don't post here too often, but either way, it's a good reminder for all.

[haulingthescoreup]

Light bulbs from Lowe's/ Home Depot, and Snickers bars from the checkout line at Best Buy!

Congrats on getting your line back.

[JaseT]

I buy my cleaning products from Lowes every month/two months to keep the account active.

[Creditaddict]

it's my experience with GE that slashes limit for non use, you can call and say you would like to use it, please put my limit back and they always do... that's why it decreases to such an odd number, I think it codes the account in the system that it was done for non use and it can be put back

[FicoScore626]

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@haulingthescoreup wrote:

Light bulbs from Lowe's/ Home Depot, and Snickers bars from the checkout line at Best Buy!

Congrats on getting your line back.

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Lol, That, or, if they're out of Snicker Bars how about a soda (canned if they have it) from the checkout line Best Buy?

[Anonymous]

When you make these small purchases to keep the card active, do you need to let it then report the small balance from that purchase? Or can you PIF, after making a single purchase, be enough to keep these banks from CLD's?

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

When you make these small purchases to keep the card active, do you need to let it then report the small balance from that purchase? Or can you PIF, after making a single purchase, be enough to keep these banks from CLD's?

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No, you don't. Remember, whether or not something reports is a scoring concern, separate from keeping the bank happy.

Just use it within the billing cycle and pay it off when it shows up online. It's useful to time this so that it's not right before the statement is due, so that you'll have plenty of time to zero things out again.

Although it's not the end of the world if it does report. You might get an alert from a monitoring service, like Scorewatch, but that doesn't mean that your score changed because it reported. It's more of a security alert, as in, Hey, there's some usage on this card that normally reports $0.

As for these minor purchases being sufficient to avoid CLD's and closure, I guess it keeps the account from falling into some sort of no-activity category in the bank's computers and showing up as a problem. Otherwise, you wouldn't think that a candy bar or soda or light bulb would be enough of a purchase. But if you call later asking for a CLI, I'd think that you could expect some pointed questions about why you would need it with such low activity, because at that point, you've got human eyes looking at your account history.

[vish1]

+1