List Credit and Charge cards which report HIGH BALANCE instead of CREDIT LIMIT, - potential serious credit score drops!

First off- the ISSUE.
The Credit Bureaus have a column where creditors are asked to report "credit limit/high balance". But when a creditor reports only the "high balance" rather than your "credit limit", your credit utilization can look much higher than it truly is, causing large drops in credit score and possible adverse action (denials of new credit etc).

It has been noted in many thread that Capital One credit cards do not report your credit limit to the bureaus, even though the cards have a defined limit. Rather, Cap One reports the highest balance your card has had. Cap One has been sued over this ( see bottom of page 8)

And many other issuers are starting to do this (many of the "no preset spending limit" cards such as WORLD MASTERCARD AND VISA SIGNATURE -see here).

Charge Cards requiring full payment each month (AM.EX charge cards and Diners Club charge card) also report "high balance" since there is technically no credit limit on a charge card (see here)


Now that doesnt necessarily mean you should avoid these cards altogether - some have good rewards or other promos. Just be sure to use the ways to "trick" how the card reports....with some issuers, you can simply call and complain to the issuer and they will report a credit limit (see the linked threads above) .

With others, such as Cap One, you need to run the card up as high as you can one month, to establish a large "high balance" number. This will function like a high credit limit number, and hopefully subsequent months will have a much lower utilization % compared to that reported high balance.

List all instances of cards which report "high balance" instead of "credit limit" in the QuickSummary...list the specific issuer and card type. And list any tricks that were SUCCESSFUL (ie calling issuer to demand reporting CL, burueau dispute resulted in adding CL, etc)

This works...for a little while, BUT the problem arises when the creditor re-reports the account.

I currently have a juniper US Airways card, they don't report the limit, only the balance. I charged it up, the high balance stood for a while, but as the months went by, they just reported 0. I have a large 20k+ limit, so I am pissed it isn't being reported. I think the next step is obvious...

I have 2x disputed with the bureaus. Experian KNOWS what the true limit is, and they won't report it, but I've got the medicine for that.

StartingMoney said:

EDIT: According to QuickSummary, someone has had High Balance report on PremierPass.

That would be me, I will follow through with my credit report in a near future to see if that is still the case. So far my highest balance (from balance transfer) was what showed up, even as I was paying down the balance.

SUCKISSTAPLES said: Charge Cards requiring full payment each month (AM.EX charge cards and Diners Club charge card) also report "high balance" since there is technically no credit limit on a charge card (see here)This is no longer an issue with Diners Club since they don't report anything to the credit bureaus any more.

This is no longer an issue with Diners Club since they don't report anything to the credit bureaus any more.

It looks like Diners are starting to report. My Diners Club account just showed up on Equifax (not showing on Experian or TransUnion)

Diners Club is reporting High Balance, not CL.
Citi AAdvantage MC World (Gold) is reporting High Balance, not CL.

Both of these cards have no pre-set limit.

My AMEX SPG reports high balance instead of credit limit.

NukeMedDude said: I was able to get all of my Visa Signature cards with no preset spending limit to report the credit limits. I have 3, and they're all with Chase. I simply called the credit department and requested that they report the limit to the credit bureaus. They did so without any hesitation, and it showed up on my credit reports within 3 weeks.

This is where I think a CRA dispute could be better than calling Chase, because mine was updated after approx a week. Of course I think that if you aren't in a hurry to get it done calling Chase would probably be your best bet.

While I tend to avoid companies that are known for rate jacking, I draw the line at this. You WILL report my limit, or you are going to feel some pain. All we need are a few lawsuits with actual damages of 20k or 50k for paying a higher interest rate on a mortgage because these moron CRA's didn't report your limit when they knew full well what it was.

Oh, there's no thinking about it. The CRA's are going to get tagged.

I can show/tell you what I am doing. I prefer death from a thousand cuts to a class action, which is capped at 500k, and will probably result in the atty's taking most of that...assuming you can get a FCRA guy on board...and want to wait like 5 years...

Naah, I'm just going to put the personal touch on it, sue the company, and sue whomever dealt with my account.

This is really easy money, and seriously just about everyone in the country with a credit card could probably sue them.

#1 obtain copy of credit report (yes, paper copy)

#2 fire off disputes citing the real, proper limits for your cards, CMRRR

#3 wait 31 days for dispute results. MAKE 10 copies!!! place original in safe place!!! This is your money maker, when they "update" your report and take off your limit despite having verified the month earlier, THIS is the report you will refer to. This is the "before/after" thing you need to referance.

#4 wait another 30-45 days for the creditor to report and the bureaus to update.

#5 find a suitable catch phrase...I prefer "I'm Rick James!" other good ones include "I came here to chew bubble gum and whoop some butt, and I'm all out of bubble gum..."

#6 upon finding your credit report is updated (credit monitoring helps termendously here) Request another copy of your report, yes paper copy.

#7 Send off your summons with your suitable catch phrase across the top in bold font 40 size print.

Total time 60-90 days. Actual time spent by you: 2-3 hours, mostly spent writing up the complaint. As with most suits, your time is mainly spent waiting on the postman.

I should clarify, updated to mean reporting anything but my true limit. High balance, 0 balance, whatever...you get a summons.

I am wondering if there is a good reason why people are not updating Quick Summary, it would take a meth addict to have one person go through all the posts and compile information from everyone's posts, so it would be helpful if people did it themselves.

At least with the Chase Signature Cards, you can make this work to your benefit and lower your overall utilization.

When you call and ask them to report your limit, they do so once with whatever the current limit is. You can then transfer this limit over to another card that reports your limit, where it will be reported again.

I did this recently with the Sony Card. I transferred my Chase CLs to my Signature card, asked them to report it, then the next month I transferred everything to my shiny new Sony Card and took out a 0% BT. The Chase card still shows on my report with the high limit, and so does the Sony card. It's a free 20k of open credit showing on my report and could be much higher depending on how many Signature cards you have and your Chase CLs.

Got a PP Elite recently. After the very first posting to CRAs no credit limit is shown indeed, high balance only. I've called CITI, the CSR had to consult with someone in background, the verdict was: this card has a "revolving credit" so they don't report it as a "credit limit" and they are proud of it (he has pretty much said "we don't report and never will").

My line of reasoning was that it's an Elite-level card with many perks, it shouldn't silently damage the owner's credit score. The CSR (domestic, btw) offered his apologies and suggested to consider another CITI card.

Now I understand that this is only one-CSR experience, I need to make at least 2 more calls to have some sampling. But so far (based on stories in this thread) looks like CITI is a way less accomodating than Chase in this matter.

1) Do missing values help/hurt? (E.g., accounts with totally missing Credit Limit, High Credit, either individual values or both?)

It hurts. Mr. FICO has nothing to compare your current balance to in these situations. If you have a $30 balance, they assume you are at 100% utilization.

2) Do values on closed accounts matter? And if so, how would you get them updated?

It is my understanding that closed accounts don't matter at all.

3) If you really wanted to dispute the high balance number, wouldn't that be a PITA going through old statements. And why would the CRA even trust that you picked the highest value?

No, you don't have to go through old statements. You don't have to prove anything. At best, all you have to do is say "my credit limit is X" and at worst just say "my credit limit is inaccurate". They aren't supposed to trust you, they are supposed to contact the creditor and verify the true information.

If they verify anything BUT your real credit limit to include zero, nothing reported, your high balance, etc... you SHOULD respond with a summons for the creditor and CRA, but if you want to keep the creditor out of it, you could choose to smack around the CRA.

The CRA failed to do an investigation and no merely parroting information back and forth isn't an investigation (Johnson v MBNA), they reported inaccurate info, they aren't striving for maximum possible accuracy. I'll take $3,000 and a clean report, please.

I sent Chase a message through their online account access and received a response that they would have each report updated with the correct limit. It seemed too easy, so I will have to wait and see if they follow through.

stockmanjr said: NeedToKnowMore said: Got a PP Elite recently. After the very first posting to CRAs no credit limit is shown indeed, high balance only. I've called CITI, the CSR had to consult with someone in background, the verdict was: this card has a "revolving credit" so they don't report it as a "credit limit" and they are proud of it (he has pretty much said "we don't report and never will").

My line of reasoning was that it's an Elite-level card with many perks, it shouldn't silently damage the owner's credit score. The CSR (domestic, btw) offered his apologies and suggested to consider another CITI card.

Now I understand that this is only one-CSR experience, I need to make at least 2 more calls to have some sampling. But so far (based on stories in this thread) looks like CITI is a way less accomodating than Chase in this matter.
I got the same answer as well..I'm gonna dispute this with the cra's and with citi. What a scam they are running if they try to rate jack me because I am maxxed out on the card then I am going to sue!

Keep us posted on where you get with the CRA's, becuase this is really starting to piss me off.

codename47 said: You ready to sue?
I will be if they refuse to do anything about it since it's nothing more than scam..Signature/world cards are supposed to be there best customers but instead we get screwed. I will also vote with my feet and stop using my "signature" card.

The column in credit reports is High Balance/Credit Limit. Can't they report either one and be legally correct?

I emailed Chase about this and they told me to fax them a letter to 888-593-8302 (or mail it to Cardmember Services, PO Box 15298, Wilmington, DE, 19850-5298) stating the issue and they updated it in about a week for me, my credit limit now shows correctly on my Visa Signature Card with them (I had only run it up to a few hundred and it has a limit of $25,000, so that certainly helped!).

lhendricks92 said: cardinalandgoldfan said: Quick question, this high balance only shows up if you don't pay off the balance before the end of the statement period, right?

yes, 99% of the time issuers will report your balances based on the snapshot of your account at the end of the statement.
I can't speak to percentages, but in my own case, the sole issuer (Cap One) who doesn't report limits did report the (historical) high balance to all 3 CRAs despite the fact that I paid down the balance before the statement cycle closed.

For the other issuers who do report limits, my experience is that Barclays, Bofa/FIA/MBNA, Chase, Wamu have reported high balances to TU and EXP only, while Discover and Citi have not. Again, in each of these cases, I never closed the cycle with the high balance as the ending balance.

Of couse, this is all YMMV.