Credit Card Watch

Credit Line Cut by Chase? Here’s a Way to Get it Back

This is a true story. Recently, Chase cut my wife’s credit limit from $18,000 to $1350 or $23 greater than her existing balance of $1327. Initially we thought this was because of a “missed” payment but still, it seemed like an excessive penalty.

We do all our banking through Bank of America’s Online Banking program. The “missed” payment was the result of the payment being sent by the bank to the wrong billing address. After a number of calls to B of A’s customer service, the bank agreed it was their error, reimbursed us the late fee Chase charged, and issued a good will letter to Chase. Unfortunately this had no impact on Chase.

Chase as you may know, recently bought up Wa Mu who had previously bought out Providian. My wife’s original card was a Providian card which she opened six years ago. In those six years she has never missed a payment. Guess what. The first line Chase customer service person didn’t know that. All that was in her computer was the brief history from the time Wa Mu purchased Providian to the time Chase acquired Wa Mu. In other words they were ignoring roughly five years of her credit history.

My wife can be pretty persistent on the phone and she finally got a supervisor on the line. After several minutes the supervisor miraculously came up with the entire history to include the letter from Bank of America. The supervisor agreed that a payment had not been missed and that information would be relayed to the credit reporting agencies.

When asked about the credit reduction, the supervisor said there was nothing she could do and to call the Lending Department.

After being switched around from a number of agents, none of whom had ever heard of the “Lending Department”, my wife finally reached a person who had the authority to change credit limits. When that person viewed the history, and the other cards in the credit report, she agreed to increase the limit back to the original $18,000. She also told my wife that she was lucky that the original customer service supervisor had taken the time to update the file to include the Providian history.

So there is the secret. If you received notice from Chase that they are cutting your credit limit, and you originally had a Providian card, chances are the decision to cut your line was made without considering your history with Providian. If that history was good, it is worth your time (a lot of it on hold) to call Chase and get them to include that history and reconsider the credit limit.

Chris Smith is a contributor to the popular consumer credit site http://www.TryCreditFix.com where you can read more of his articles on credit repair, budgets, credit rebuilding and more. Be sure to see the SNL video on a very basic financial rule “Don’t Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford” It’s a classic