Synchrony lowered CL on Amazon store card. Should I close ?

[Anonymous]

I'm working on getting my scores up by getting my utilization down. Rather than paying off this card, I paid down to 25% utilization ($200). I've been excited to see what my score would do once it updated and I see an alert this morning -The day has come! 

Nope. Utilitization showing at 95% because they dropped the credit line to $210, just above my new statement balance. 

So naturally now I will just pay the rest of the balance, but should I just close this card? I've had no negative history on this card, always on time. History from 2016 to present, so not terribly long on this one. I'm concerned given this recent action by synchrony that they may just close once I've paid it off. Isn't it better for me to beat them to it so it shows "Closed at Consumer request"? 

Thanks. 

[K-in-Boston]

Most likely if Synchrony were going to close it, they would have done so even with a balance remaining.  The balance chasing sounds like it is due to high utilization on other cards as well and this is just risk mitigation.  Once you improve your utilization, you should be able to ask for a credit line increase.

Closed by lender vs closed at consumer's request doesn't usually make any difference.  On a manual review, there might be some questions regarding why numerous accounts were closed by lender (many lates during financial distress but not late enough to report to the bureaus, for instance) but there are no scoring impacts from that field and cards are closed by lender for benign reasons all the time (product discontinued, sold to another lender, etc.).

[credit_is_crack]

@Anonymous I'd just pay it off and put it in the sock drawer. There's no annual fee so no loss there, and like @K-in-Boston mentioned, there must be some high utilization activity (could be on this card alone, or overall) that triggered it. Once you bring that back down you can always go back and ask for a CLI. 

Now if you're not using it then I'd just close it out, but sounds like it's just a bump in the road. It's only $210 now, but if utilization is your goal then leaving it open gives you some more padding.