I lurk, a LOT, but rarely post. But I need some advice .... because I did a very, very stupid thing. My oldest tradeline is the Citi AA. It had a a CL of $1700 and it was in extremely good standing, despite a pockmarked credit history otherwise (the remaining negs are mostly medical collections stemming from an insurance dispute, blah, blah, you've heard it all before.) Current balance is only around $50; until last year I had been carrying a balance but never missed a payment, but when I feared losing my job I paid it off and haven't really been using it since. Ironically, now my job is fairly secure, and I'd like to do some travel. Instead of being happy with my perfectly adequate AA card, I got greedy and applied for a new Citi Thank You card. Upon which they promptly 1) denied me and 2) dropped the CL on the AA card from $1,700 to $300 (ouch.) What's the best way to go about asking them to reconsider the credit limit decrease? Do they ever reconsider? I know the general wisdom is to do everything by letter but I've actually had really good luck in the past calling Citi and sweetly asking for things. Edit: Oddly enough, the decrease probably won't hurt my debt-to-credit ratio because I was just approved for a $1,500 Wells Fargo MC. But still .... the decrease! it stings!
It can't hurt to ask, but they might just make you wait a few months and request another CL increase. What are your FICO scores? The decrease in your CL was probably due to the fact that you weren't really using the card anymore. I have perfect credit, and Citi even closed one of my old no annual fee credit cards due to inactivity. They've been doing that a lot more often over the past few years.
