Credit card provider automatically increasing credit limit

T

Tippmike

Guest
Hi all,

Just new to the site , must say it looks seriously impressive the amount of info on display. On a quick trawl I couldnt see an answer to my question so apologies if it has been answered before I am just too blind to see. What I am wondering is , as this has just happened to me today is , can banks/cc companies up your limit even if you have told them you dont want that to be the case. In our situation, my wife and I had a little communication error. I had thought she had cleared the amount due to a certain amount below the limit and subsequently I added said amount to the amount. Turns out, what actually happened was the company raised the limit by a couple of thousand without us knowing and communicating that to each other. Now that its past the limit they are getting narky on the phone about it. We are in the position that we can bring it well below the limit straight away, which is fortunate, but and I accept this completely is our, well my own fault, I just dont understand the grounds on which they upped the limit despite my wife having told them as of last week not to

Any advice would be great, thank you

Mike
 
Re: Credit card limits

Tippmike said:
can banks/cc companies up your limit even if you have told them you dont want that to be the case.
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How did you tell them - e.g. verbally over the phone, in writing, etc.? It would be bad of them to ignore such instructions not to change the credit limit without further instructions/confirmation from you but I'm not sure that this would be illegal or in breach of any regulations. Have you complained to the card provider about them seemingly ignoring your instructions?
In our situation, my wife and I had a little communication error. I had thought she had cleared the amount due to a certain amount below the limit and subsequently I added said amount to the amount. Turns out, what actually happened was the company raised the limit by a couple of thousand without us knowing and communicating that to each other. Now that its past the limit they are getting narky on the phone about it. We are in the position that we can bring it well below the limit straight away, which is fortunate, but and I accept this completely is our, well my own fault, I just dont understand the grounds on which they upped the limit despite my wife having told them as of last week not to
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I don't really understand what happened here. Perhaps you can clarify using specific dates and figures? I'm also not really clear on what sort of restitution (if any?) you are looking for here.
 
Re: Credit card limits

Hi Clubman,

Cheers for the reply. As for the first instance, my wife spoke to them over the phone last week and specifically asked for the limit not to be increased and they said that "it should be ok" and when she pressed them on that they said " yes, it wont be increased without you requesting the same", so really I suppose the question is , when is a limit not a limit. The logic would be that if I had attempted to add several thousand to the existing balance would it have been allowed rather than the thousand concerned?

Secondly, I am actually not looking for restitution here at all. Its fully my own fault, I had thought my wife had paid some off the balance off, therefore allowing me to use the card for x amount, however the bank actually had increased the limit, which is why the transaction was allowed to take place. I am not really explaining this properly I guess, just that it is sort of annoying that this has happened

Thanks again Clubman
 
Re: Credit card limits

Write to them and tell them what you want the credit limit to be set at and that you don't want this changed without further notice from yourselves.
 
Re: Credit card limits

As far as I know legislation came into force beginning of August which bans the banks from raising the limit of ur credit card or giving or u a pre approved limit on a loan without u contacting them first..
 
Re: Credit card limits

Do you have any reference to such rules? Can't find anything online.
 
Re: Credit card limits

IFSRA published its consumer protection code [broken link removed]
which states that:

A regulated entity may only increase a consumer’s credit card limit following a request from the consumer.
 
Re: Credit card limits

Club, Dach and griz thank you very much for the help there. That link is an interesting thing to note. I assume it changes very little but I am going to be writing to and contacting by phone the bank and credit card company later once I get my ducks in a row as it were. Really I guess it highlights how they operate in such a vulture like manner. We are lucky in the sense we can pay off this debt and do so every month, however as we are in the middle of a mortgage application, with a different institution I was unsure of how to proceed with this. Still am but am glad to have that nugget as provided on here

Cheers

Mike
 
Re: Credit card limits

Tippmike said:
Turns out, what actually happened was the company raised the limit by a couple of thousand without us knowing and communicating that to each other. Now that its past the limit they are getting narky on the phone about it.
Click to expand...

Sorry Mike, I don't get this bit. From the quoted piece here, it would appear that your limit was not raised, but that when you used your credit card, it permitted the transaction to go through, and that put it over the limit, instead of them declining the card to prevent it going over the limit
This then resulted in your card having a balance over the authorised limit, and they are getting narky about this

So......if my reading of this is as described, then I am not sure how the CC company is in the wrong here. Perhaps your issue with them is that the transaction should have been declined instead of sending you over your limit?

Can you clarify?
 
Re: Credit card limits

Hi amg,

Thats exactly it, I would have thought that the transaction should not have been permitted as it took the balance past the limit. I also didnt mention that my wife was out of the country at the time and I had incorrectly assumed that she had reduced the balance before going so. But she actually had specifically told them before going that she didnt want the limit raised as she didnt want to be tempted into spending money shopping whilst abroad.

You have put it best there, which I was unable to do, that the while wasnt raised the actually allowable balance on the card was.

I detect by your wording that there is a big difference, I hadnt thought there was, but see it now. Sorry to all for being so ambigious and the shocking lack of clarity by myself. Yet I still at a loss to understand how the transaction could have been allowed as opposed to declined, once the balance was exceeded

Mike
 
Others might correct me on this, but I believe that once your card is under the limit, the next transaction is allowed. It is only when you have breached the limit, that the next transaction is declined. At least that is how I think it works, so if you have a limit of, say 7,000 and the balance was at 6500, and you buy a laptop for 800, I am fairly sure the transaction will go through.
However if 5 days later you go to buy something else, the transaction will be declined, as you have breached your limit....
The other thing to consider is that you may be at say 6500 and in the same day buy three things for say 300 each. It may well be that all three are permitted, as it can take a couple of days for the transactions to hit your card.

Hope this helps, but I could be wrong, but I'm sure others will be quick to point that out if I am;)
 
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