@Selphactualized wrote:It is nobody's business if she has 1 card or 50 cards. If she is paying the on time never late then whether judgements from you, and worse why should they close the accounts, again if she was never late they have no business closing not 1, but definately not all her cards. Synchrony could easily have concluded that since she has paid on time for all of the cards then she must have the means to afford them and therefore not a high risk customer. I've never heard of a company to close an account in good standing. And why? Because they feel she has too many store cards? Please, payment history should reign here. The customer is not the problem so stop blaming them. The problem is co.pany policy shrouded in idiocy. Boycott synchrony bank.
Welcome to My FICO Forums, @Selphactualized. 
I also dislike Synchrony's reputation for seemingly knee-jerk reactions and wholesale closing (or decreasing) credit limits. Still, there is no need for a boycott here. They just have a somewhat different lending model and risk assessment from some other lenders and can be a bit more sensitive at times. But ultimately, there is always something about the customer profile that leads to these sorts of things. We may be frustrated when we get singled out or don't see it coming, but it's not random and it does not happen to every customer.
Most lenders not only do a "risk assessment" at the time of approving new credit but also continue to reevalutate periodically. A consumer with large but mostly unused limits doesn't appear to need or appreciate the credit offered, so a lender has every right to withdraw it. Likewise, if utilization or other overall credit factors change, even if they are not related to payment history on that lender's cards, their overall risk is considered higher and the lender might reevaluate the relationship. There is a specific type of fraud related to accumulating large credit lines called >Bust-Out Fraud< (see link to Investopedia article on the topic) that lenders try to mitigate. But even beyond the intent to defraud, lenders mitigate losses by decreasing credit limits, closing accounts, or raising APRs. Those are the tools they have to use. Keep in mind, also, that lenders may reevaluate credit relationships independent of the consumer profile based on their own overall financial health or economic conditions.
@Aim_High wrote:
@Selphactualized wrote:It is nobody's business if she has 1 card or 50 cards. If she is paying the on time never late then whether judgements from you, and worse why should they close the accounts, again if she was never late they have no business closing not 1, but definately not all her cards. Synchrony could easily have concluded that since she has paid on time for all of the cards then she must have the means to afford them and therefore not a high risk customer. I've never heard of a company to close an account in good standing. And why? Because they feel she has too many store cards? Please, payment history should reign here. The customer is not the problem so stop blaming them. The problem is co.pany policy shrouded in idiocy. Boycott synchrony bank.
Welcome to My FICO Forums, @Selphactualized.
I also dislike Synchrony's reputation for seemingly knee-jerk reactions and wholesale closing (or decreasing) credit limits. Still, there is no need for a boycott here. They just have a somewhat different lending model and risk assessment from some other lenders and can be a bit more sensitive at times. But ultimately, there is always something about the customer profile that leads to these sorts of things. We may be frustrated when we get singled out or don't see it coming, but it's not random and it does not happen to every customer.
Most lenders not only do a "risk assessment" at the time of approving new credit but also continue to reevalutate periodically. A consumer with large but mostly unused limits doesn't appear to need or appreciate the credit offered, so a lender has every right to withdraw it. Likewise, if utilization or other overall credit factors change, even if they are not related to payment history on that lender's cards, their overall risk is considered higher and the lender might reevaluate the relationship. There is a specific type of fraud related to accumulating large credit lines called >Bust-Out Fraud< (see link to Investopedia article on the topic) that lenders try to mitigate. But even beyond the intent to defraud, lenders mitigate losses by decreasing credit limits, closing accounts, or raising APRs. Those are the tools they have to use. Keep in mind, also, that lenders may reevaluate credit relationships independent of the consumer profile based on their own overall financial health or economic conditions.
Even forgetting deliberate fraud:
Please, payment history should reign here. The customer is not the problem so stop blaming them.
What people forget here is that in some real sense perfect payment history isn't a positive, it's the contractual obligation. Sure, you get hit (fairly hard) if you are late, but that's not the same as being rewarded for paying on time, that's just what you agreed to do.
So an issuer is always asking the question "Will this person pay their future debts?" and again, if they have been late before, that's a big black mark, but a perfect payment history doesn't indicate "Not a problem at all" if there are any possible flags, either with the user or with the economy. And if the customer is perceived, rightly or wrongly, to be a risk, closing all the cards makes sense. Any other approach, such as CLDing all cards to so that the total is "reasonable" would create almost equal outrage here.