Consumer complaint received 2023-11-10
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: KS
Product: Credit card
Sub-product: Store credit card
Issue: Trouble using your card
Sub-issue: Credit card company won't increase or decrease your credit limit

Complaint:
Opened a Home Depot credit card account XX/XX/XXXX with a {$1000.00} limit. Credit limit was decreased to {$500.00} in a letter dated XX/XX/XXXX. The 4 reasons stated for decreasing my limit in the letter were : Length of time credit history has been established, number of revolving accounts with high usage, payment pattern on your account with us, and number of recent credit inquiries. The letter stated the decision was made in whole or in part on information obtained in a credit report from XXXX. I contacted XXXX XXXX XXXX and spoke with a credit specialist at XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX to ask for further explanation on the decrease and to state my payments on this account have always been made on time so that reason doesn't seem justified, and to confirm they are not reporting my payments incorrectly to any credit bureaus. I also explained that I have used more of my credit in the past few months because I moved XXXX of my older XXXX  and her baby, my XXXX  in with me as she left a XXXX XXXX  and another one of my older XXXX  got married in XXXX, so my spending has been slightly different on my other credit cards due to those 2 factors, but that doesn't mean I'm not paying the cards, and I didn't use the Home Depot card but for a few small items. She advised they do review accounts on occasion and have the right to decrease or increase credit limits. She advised I should contact the credit reporting agency to confirm everything is accurate on my credit report as there is nothing they can do to change anything and transferred me to customer service to talk about my payments as they can't answer anything about that, they also can't see the letter that was mailed to me. The customer service rep. walked me through the dates and amounts of my payments and I asked so then everything has been paid on time, correct? And the representative said yes, so I asked if they could explain why that my payments on the account are stated as a reason for decreasing my credit limit. The representative advised they can just tell me the information on my payments, I would have to speak to a specialist to discuss anything related to credit limit, so I asked if that is who transferred me to them and it was, so they transferred me to another specialist. The second specialist I spoke with advised the same exact information as the first as if it is being read from a book, I need to check my credit report to ensure everything is accurate. XX/XX/XXXX, I pulled my free credit report from XXXX and all of my payment histories appear accurate and on-time. My length of credit history is reported as XXXX  years and my average account age is XXXX  years, XXXX  months, so it would seem I have credit established for a long time which doesn't add up with the reason quoted in the letter. When checking the amount of credit inquires reported, there are 2 in XXXX, one of which is for the Home Depot card in XXXX and the other is CBNA in XXXX which I believe is Citibank who offers the Home Depot card and I didn't offer the inquiry, maybe they did that when " reviewing '' my account? And there were XXXX in the year XXXX which were XXXX XXXX which is a new account and the other is from a Bank of which I opened a new account because my previous bank moved locations and it was inconvenient for me. So I don't think those would count as a high number of inquiries which is another reason that was quoted. I explained my reason to them for the difference in credit card amounts at the time, but I feel like that explanation should be considered as a good explanation, but maybe not. I feel like XXXX of the reasons quoted are definitely not valid, XXXXne reason may be somewhat valid, but I did offer explanation for that, and I know they don't have to accept the explanation. It seems like unfair practice to me to decrease a credit limit after having only opened the account in XXXX and most of their reasons are invalid. And I feel like it's difficult to get any straight answers, you're just transferred between different people at the company and each time your transferred they note they will put you on a brief XXXX minute hold to transfer, that seems like a tactic to get someone to hang up because they don't want to wait.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation