My husband has a citi account with almost $17K limit, and the card was almost maxxed out. We pulled 10K out of his 401K to pay down that balance and sent them an ebt on 6/30. Last week we attempted to use the card, and were declined. Husband called today (finally) to find out why, and was told that we were over the limit!!!! Apparently, Citibank dropped his limit to 6K (meaning we are now over the limit so they can charge us an OTL fee). When he asked to speak to a superviser today (Sunday) he was told that that department is closed until tomorrow. Of course, this will hurt his FICO b/c his other cards are close to 100% utilized and instead of having $10K in available/unused credit now he's showing up as overextended. Do we have a chance at reasoning with the service reps to reinstate his original credit limit? Should we try PFB - Citi lowered his APR after a PFB letter a few months ago. Any insight appreciated!!!!! Thanks Poochie
Citi obviously saw him as a credit risk. They also saw the paydown as an opportunity to lessen their exposure to risk. You could call and ask a supervisor to restore the CL back to the high level. However, that doesn't seem to be in their best interest, so I wouldn't expect it to happen. Maybe the best thing to do is to dip further into savings and pay the entire balance off.
PFB WILL GO TO THE IVORY TOWERS... www.planetfeedback.com Did they say they had CAUSE??? I have "MAXED" cards many times!!!
Since you got money out of a 401k I ASSUME you have no other card you could BT is gone... It will HURT F.I.C.O. Also you will be OVER-LIMIT If you apply ever again and somebody "LOOKS" at your credit report...THEY WILL ASSUME YOU WERE ALWAYS OVER-LIMIT!!!
CREDIT LIMIT $6,000 HIGH BALANCE $17,000 CURRENT BALANCE $7,000 THEY SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO LOWER THE LIMIT UNDER YOUR CURRENT BALANCE...THEY DID THAT WITH MALICE!!!
I agree about the malice bit! The weird thing is that PFB worked a few months ago for getting the APR lowered despite a recent 30 day late. So they have been really nice to us, and it was our favorite card until today. We're going to play nice with the supervisor, and if that doesn't work we'll beg through PFB. The sucky thing is that although we're paying down his other accounts, we wanted to leave Citi open for a trip to Yerp (ok, we're rednecks) so they would have had plenty of opportunity to make money off us. Thanks! Poochie
IF you owe $25K on your 26K citi card you are cool. if you owe 25K on several other cards, and zip on citi you are UNCOOL. seriously a rep told me that. High debt ratio is a danger sign, of course unless you are paying them interest.
Re: Re: Citi Insanity! What should I do? That's so screwed up! With that ebt of 10K, we effectively wiped out 33% of spouse's CC debt. His other cards are not completely maxed, some of them have a few thousand left. Do you think we stand a chance of getting the line back? This just looks sooo damaging - now I wish we'd just paid off a few of the smaller ones.
Re: Re: Citi Insanity! What should I do? Of course it's too late now but in the future, BT the entire amount to another card. Don't give them the chance to screw up your credit.
Re: Re: Citi Insanity! What should I do? Citi obviously saw him as a credit risk. too much ============= More like a gouging opportunity THE END ** *** ** LB 59
Re: Re: Citi Insanity! What should I do? quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Citi obviously saw him as a credit risk. Originally posted by too much ============ No they saw him as a SEX Symbol judging from the way they screwed him. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LMAO! HILARIOUS!!! You guys are the BEST ! That's what I love about this site - no matter how bad things are at least you can find something to laugh about. This will make Hubby's day.
I actually got turned down for a limit increase on one of my Citibank cards, with one reason being that utilization was too high on my non-Citibank accounts. That shows they like you to carry balances on your Citibank cards, but get jealous and/or afraid if you owe too much money to other banks.
