Synchrony cutting and closing every single one of my accounts...

[Anonymous]

I have maybe 20k in Synch lines. I use them, I pay them off or keep them around 30-40%. Around 4 months ago I started to notice that everytime I made a payment, they would cut my credit line close to the balance. For example TJMaxx card, CL is 2.8k, used maybe 2k for new furniture, paid down to 1.2k mid month, boom, credit line decreased to 1250. Make another payment of $700 the following month, boom, CL is 607 now. The same happened to virtually all of my Synch accounts.... 

Why don't they just close them? Why are they sucking me out and slowly killing me. Walmart chopped, Kanes chopped, TjMaxx chopped, Sams Club chopped, and more... 

I realize my exposure might be high, but I use these cards and pay them well. Additionally, my credit in general is actually pretty decent. I'm not over utilized, and I have zero negs, and I've never done Synch wrong.

Is Synch starting to feel the pain of lending to anybody and everybody? Are they tightening up and/or is this an indiciation of the economy starting to "collapse"? LOL

I should mention, they are also doing this to my wife, closing cards. She uses and PIF every month. Never carries balances, or if she does, it'll be a hundred of less on a card that has pretty high lines. She has impecable credit, nearly perfect, lost 30k+ of lines.

Letters are starting things like "Debt to Income Ratio is too high", "Too many delinquencies", something about risk, history, etc. None of the bullet points apply to us.... 

[Adkins]

If you don't know of any "deliquencies", I'd pull credit reports ASAP and make sure they are truly clean. 30-40% balance is a lot, especially on multiple cards from the same lender. They can't just close your cards outright until they are at a zero balance, that's why they are balance chasing you. Synchrony & commenity (and Barclays on occasion) are known to do this, especially if something changes in your credit profile they don't like. 

[pipeguy]

It's called balance chasing and while it's no fun because it shows almost 100% utilization, it's probably better than the 100% utilization if they closed your accounts with the note "Close by Credit Grantor". There are various threads on MF about this which is not limited to just Sync, but includes lenders like Capital One, Citi, Chase, Comenity, and Barclays.  Once paid off your choice is to wait it out and in some cases, the credit lines are restored, or just close the accounts and walk away. 

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I have maybe 20k in Synch lines. I use them, I pay them off or keep them around 30-40%. Around 4 months ago I started to notice that everytime I made a payment, they would cut my credit line close to the balance. For example TJMaxx card, CL is 2.8k, used maybe 2k for new furniture, paid down to 1.2k mid month, boom, credit line decreased to 1250. Make another payment of $700 the following month, boom, CL is 607 now. The same happened to virtually all of my Synch accounts.... 

Why don't they just close them? Why are they sucking me out and slowly killing me. Walmart chopped, Kanes chopped, TjMaxx chopped, Sams Club chopped, and more... 

I realize my exposure might be high, but I use these cards and pay them well. Additionally, my credit in general is actually pretty decent. I'm not over utilized, and I have zero negs, and I've never done Synch wrong.

Is Synch starting to feel the pain of lending to anybody and everybody? Are they tightening up and/or is this an indiciation of the economy starting to "collapse"? LOL

I should mention, they are also doing this to my wife, closing cards. She uses and PIF every month. Never carries balances, or if she does, it'll be a hundred of less on a card that has pretty high lines. She has impecable credit, nearly perfect, lost 30k+ of lines.

Letters are starting things like "Debt to Income Ratio is too high", "Too many delinquencies", something about risk, history, etc. None of the bullet points apply to us.... 

---

I'm going to ask you, have you looked - really looked - at all three of your FICO credit reports? EQ, EX, TU? What other cards or installment loans do you have aside from your Synchrony cards? What's your current income? AAoA? Are you sure (again, you need to carefully review your credit reports) there's nothing that's been going on lately that would alarm issuers?

I'm asking these questions because, when AA happens, there is ALWAYS something going on that has set off alarms somewhere in the issuer's computers. It doesn't even have to be anything involving Synchrony, which is why I ask if you know of any issues at all regarding other bank cards, retail cards or installment loans.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that my reports are clean. Also the list is different, but it's always like 5-10 different reasons. It seems like they are trying to use any and all reasons to do this to us.

I guess the reason for my question was, are there any people with clean reports, receiving the same type of cuts? Could this be an indication that Synch itself it over it's head and trying to mitigate risk by simply cutting out any and all customers?

I realilze that 40-50% balance is not the best, but those are cards that are being used. There was easily over 10K of lines with zero util, thus my overall util was much lower than that.

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Sorry, I should have mentioned that my reports are clean. Also the list is different, but it's always like 5-10 different reasons. It seems like they are trying to use any and all reasons to do this to us.

I guess the reason for my question was, are there any people with clean reports, receiving the same type of cuts? Could this be an indication that Synch itself it over it's head and trying to mitigate risk by simply cutting out any and all customers?

I realilze that 40-50% balance is not the best, but those are cards that are being used. There was easily over 10K of lines with zero util, thus my overall util was much lower than that.

---

Stipulated that your reports are clean from where you're looking at them, but the problem is that issuers often look at things in your report that may not be immediately apparent to the borrower as a problem, and have all sorts of programs and algorithms that yield results that indicate to them that you may be a worse risk than you believe you are from the information you have. If you're having several cards with up to 50% utilization, even if you're keeping up with payments on those, that could be seen as a potential problem by Synchrony. What sort of payments are you making per month when you're not paying in full? Are you making minimum payments only or are you trying to make more than that?

[fltireguy]

With this scenario from Sync, the best bet is to call them and close the cards that are being balance chased.
This will do 2 things. First, the card will show as closed by consumer, which, on a manual review, could possibly look better. Second, it will fix the utilization issues that go with the balance chasing. When you close a card with Sync, the credit limit that will continue to show on your reports will be the last limit before you closed it. They will NOT lower the limit on a closed account. They will only lower it on an open one. The cards will probably end up being closed by them, you might want to make that pre emptive strike and close them, and salvage your utilization at least

[pipeguy]

---

@fltireguy wrote:
With this scenario from Sync, the best bet is to call them and close the cards that are being balance chased.
This will do 2 things. First, the card will show as closed by consumer, which, on a manual review, could possibly look better. Second, it will fix the utilization issues that go with the balance chasing. When you close a card with Sync, the credit limit that will continue to show on your reports will be the last limit before you closed it. They will NOT lower the limit on a closed account. They will only lower it on an open one. The cards will probably end up being closed by them, you might want to make that pre emptive strike and close them, and salvage your utilization at least

---

While they will not "lower" your limit per se, all of these accounts will continue to show 100% utilization until paid in full. Available credit only reports on open accounts. I personally close any account I get balance chased or CL reductions on, but I have a ton of cards and can afford to close cards, not everyone has that option. 

[Anonymous]

I haven't pulled my ficos, direct from MyFico, but my other fico and Fako's show nothing new on all three. It's also been happening since before Xmas, so really, while I agree 100% that fako reports aren't as accurate, they evetually do "catch up" on reporting. That being said, several of my banks offer actual Fico and AFAIK those are accurate?  Again, it's been a long time, so I'd imagine that they would all see these "derogatory" remarks.

AAoA is decent, it's around 4.5 years, which isn't great, but it's not bad.

Other accounts are:

2 comenity bank accounts - no change.

2 Citi accounts - no change.

2 Personal Amex & 1 Business - no change

2 NFCU - CC and CLOC

2 CapOne

And a few random CU credit cards

No change on any accounts.

Income is 224k single, 360k joint - properly reported on taxes, no funny writeoffs or anything like that.

Nobody else has taken action, nor has any other bank even indicated that it has intentions to. Citi recently closed my Jewelers Reserve, but that was becuase I hadn't used it in a few years. My other citi store cards are just fine.

That being said, I cannot stress enough that this is not just happening to me, but also my wife. We have virtually no connection in regards to credit. She's in the 800s, shes a doc, and she handles her cards very well. One day her Brooks Brothers card is closed, the next day her Gap card is dropped to 400, then American Eagle is cut in half.

She however has never even received a reason in the mail - maybe it's electronic and she doesn't know where to check. She just logs in and sees that her limit has decreased. She's so insanely on top of her finances. She compares her previous statements to the most recent and that's where she sees the change. She has spreadsheets, etc. 

I bet I could argue a few reasons why this might happen to me, if I did a deep search and found some sort of "irregularity" on my reports. But it's happening to her too - and she is as plain as can be. PIF, perfect credit since 18. AAoA is like 7 years. Not too many cards, maybe only 3 Synchs, the rest banks. No Auto loans in her name, nothing.

I don't want to sound like a conspiracy therorist but either, a) this is an indiciation that the economy is taking a downturn and banks are trying to limit their exposure/risks, or b) does synch know something we don't? Serious/not serious comment - are the feds about to take all of our money? LOL.

EDIT: I should also add that my other lines still continue to grow. It's just Synch that attacking me.

EDIT AGAIN: I forgot to mention that around the time this started to happen, BofA closed my CC with nothing other reason than that of a "general risk" reason. It was very vague.

I don't want to make an excuse for what's happening, and I'm not trying to take the blame off my myself - if I did something wrong. But Synch and BofA don't seem to be too healthy compared to other lenders. BofA also closed one of my wifes card, but gave an increase of her half of the limit on her other card, when she called for an explaination.

[Gollum]

I'm guessing Synchrony is just reducing their exposure.  A quick Internet search shows that current credit card debt has surpassed the peak from just before the 2008 housing crash, and this (from August 8, 2017): "Synchrony Financial... said its provisions for loan losses... jumped 30% year-on-year to $1.33 billion in the second quarter."