Consumer complaint received 2019-09-26
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: TX
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Trouble using your card
Sub-issue: Credit card company won't increase or decrease your credit limit

Complaint:
Over the past 2 years I have tried getting a reasonable credit line extended to me through American Express. The account has been open and in perfect standing since XX/XX/2017 when I applied for the card. Per American Express ' own scoring system that is used to determine your credit worthiness I have a XXXX FICO8 score. They will not give me more than a {$1000.00} credit limit. I have continuously asked for a credit limit increase and have consistently been denied citing my credit is not good enough. I have asked over 6 different times during the course of 2 years and 5 months since the account was opened. Mind you no other card issuer has ever given me problems or denied reasonable credit line increase requests. My average credit line on all other cards is around 8-10k which is I feel on par with my income and credit rating. I use credit frequently in my line of work as I am out of pocket thousands of dollars quite frequently for materials for 1 to 3 weeks at a time. I have explained this to them and nobody will ever help me. I have 2 colleagues that as well have the exact same credit card. I have asked them personal questions to determine why I am being denied. Both openly told me as well as showed me their FICO8 score AMEX gives to them and both individuals had lower scores than mine by 50 or more points. As well 1 of the individuals has had his account a shorter time duration than I have and the other individual has had his account longer. Both have never been denied for a credit line increase. I again applied for a credit line increase less than 10 days ago. Again I was denied. I called AMEX immediately and asked why and was not given a reason. I as well wrote to them through their phone app and asked why as I was suspecting they were using discriminatory practices as there is no other possible reason. I owe no money. Have no balances at the end of the month. My debt to income ratio is ultra low and I have an excellent credit score. I was called numerous times by an AMEX representative over the past week and a half. Each time not a convenient time to talk until tonight when they called again. I questioned the representative over why I am constantly denied. She acknowledged the " notes in the system '' from me stating they are being discriminatory to who there are issuing credit to. I told the representative that is correct and that it very much seems this is the case. I was shocked by her response. Her response was " this is why we are calling you ''. To further clarify and not take anything out of context I asked " so you are calling me because you have been discriminatory in you credit practices and I have filed a complaint? '' To which the representative acknowledge with a " yes ''. So to again further clarify and not take anything out of context I stated " so you are only calling now and want to help me because I have lodged a complaint and have expressed that I will be filing complaints as well with regulatory agencies ''. To this the representative stated " yes this is why we are calling you and want to connect you with the credit department ''.

I will admit anger came over me I had no intention of further talking with anyone from this company as they seem to only want to reach out when caught in unfair practices. So I disconnected the call. I have since noticed they have increased my limit to a measly {$3000.00} which is still quite unusable in my line of work and does not fit with my income or credit rating. I have a few times in life due to my name experienced some discrimination. I don't believe often but I have been well aware of when it has happened. One of those times was quite long ago by a bank that refused to loan me money and would not tell me why. This was in the XX/XX/XXXX however the similarities are suspect in this instance. I as well have never previously had any accounts with American Express that could have negatively affected any decision. 

I have included a screen shot of the score AMEX is saying they are using from my account

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation