DebtSmart®: MBNA Reduced My Limit for No Reason!

Thank you for your newsletter I think it is terrific!

I wanted to share with you an incident that occurred on Friday of this past week.

June of this year, my husband had an MBNA credit card that had $38K credit limit, so we asked MBNA to deposit $20K of it into our bank account and paid off high interest credit cards with that. MBNA gave us 3.99% interest for a year on that amount.

I had $1,700 on an American Express card that had an interest rate of 21%. I called MBNA on Friday to ask if they would transfer the $1,700 to this account and can I get the 3.99 interest. A manager got on the line and proceeded to ask me if some questions to verify the credit limit. He then told me that he was reducing my credit limit based on the amount of outstanding credit my husband had. I told him that I was not interested in the balance transfer after all because he decided to reduce my credit limit just like that. I told him we had this account a long time and we had never been late, not once. I also told him that I was making payments of $700-$900 a month on this credit card, a larger amount that what was due $250.00. He said that didn't matter to them.

I was really surprised at this. I wasn't sure how else to handle it. Sure enough, I called back an hour after I spoke to the manager and credit limit was decreased to $24K from $38K. I was floored but there was nothing I could do about that.

Margie V. Powers

Margie,

Glad to hear that you like the email newsletter!

Yes, this situation happened to me a few years ago with MBNA. They acquired another bank and this increased the number of MBNA cards that I owned. They started closing my accounts and reducing limits. I called and spoke to many supervisors. They still went ahead with those changes. I explained that I had those account for years - but that didn't matter.

The reason was that I had too much debt. Isn't that what they want? I told them I could pay it off tomorrow. They said "how?" I said "with money." (Transfers.) Their loss! I transferred my balances! Let the other banks that treat you well make a profit. PUNISH MBNA - transfer your balance to another card.

Try some that I have listed (see resource link).

TIP: When applying for new lines of credit online, or on an application, be sure to do a balance transfer during the online application process because this increases your chances of getting the card! This may be all it takes to get past the application process. So grab your credit card statements and start applying for new cards now!

Best,
Scott