If so, did you do anything about it — and what did you do?
Spoiler alert: It happened to us recently. This is a rant about that experience.
Here's the scenario. It's all abut the $$. We applied for an increase on a credit card that we plan to use for a trip this year. The initial trip deposit was made on this card; final payment is due in a couple of months. That amount will exceed the current card limit.
Deciding to apply for a credit increase, we did so online at the card website. There's a few queries to answer/update: annual income, salary (if working), monthly rent/mortgage, monthly amount charged on the card. The last one was problematic. We don't track monthly expenses, just use it and pay off in full, ahead of the due date.
Surprise to us. The credit increase was denied and a reply posted on our account. Reason: Recent use of this account's existing credit line has been too low.
Directed to another bank website for more information about this denial reason we learned: In general, customers who are most often approved for credit line increases tend to use more of their credit line by spending and paying off the card each month or by keeping a balance on the account and paying it over a period of time.
A What You Can Do area suggested: If you plan to use your card more, make sure you use your card responsibly. Add AutoPay and customized alerts to help you make more than your minimum payment on time each month . . .
We have checking and savings accounts with this bank. Oddly, we have another card with nearly twice the credit limit than this one and don't have any accounts with the issuing bank. This is why we found the denial reason even more irksome (and annoying too).
What Did We Do?
The cookie cutter reply, so annoyed me that I wrote a letter to include the above information and added our long standing as customers and good credit score, etc.
My letter noted the reason for the increase and even suggested that a lesser credit line increase would be acceptable. Another alternative was if a temporary credit line increase would be possible when the final trip payment is due. (This would serve our needs.)
Of course, we know that customers, like us, who don't carry a monthly balance and pay off accounts on or ahead of time are not ideal customers. The bank has your monies in its accounts, but isn't collecting any extra $ through interest charges.
Our rebuttal was mailed this week with a request for a written response. We're not taking any bets on whether or not one will be received. (No GoFundMe needed here.)
To be continued . . .
