A NEW INCOME

A New Income Q&A

Q: Did Bank of America pull a hard inquiry on me for their "review"?

Basically, I have a Platinum Plus Visa card that I've had for about 5 years now and a American Express that I've had for about a year or less, both of which are through Bank of America. They recently cut my credit limit on the oldest card, from $10,000 down to $5,000 but added $1,000 to the AmEx that already had a $14,000 credit limit, making it $15,000. I got a letter from them saying they reviewed my account and are lowering the credit limit "given my income" to an "appropriate credit limit." But of course, they were the idiots that kept upping my limit over the time, to begin with. They had an issue with the Visa that was the oldest...didn't touch the AmEx with the insane limit, and quite new. Instead, they added $1k to it, like an idiot. They also stated that they pulled a copy of my Experian credit report. It seems they are jealous of my other "creditors" and kicked me down for having credit cards with higher credit limits with other creditors as well. At the bottom of the Bank of America letter, it goes into a spill about "We understand that there are a number of factors that can affect our customers' ability to meet their financial obligations. If you find that you are having difficulty making payments, call and do this and that, blah blah blah." Never been a day late on any of my credit card payments. Last myFICO credit score of 752. About $5k vs. $70k debt to credit ratio...no problem there. Isn't it illegal for them to be "comparing to my other cards" and cut my limit because they don't like that I have other competitors' cards with high available credit limits? They also act like I am having financial troubles or something...there is no balance on either of those cards. I run smaller balances through them every month to keep them active. I know they hate having to keep a large amount of credit open that isn't being used - but again, they were the ones who gave it to me. My only question is - did they pull a hard credit inquiry for this nonsense? Or is it always a soft? I also had over $6k in cash in a checking account with them that they can see...so it's not like they don't have collateral.

A: Did you apply for a new card? If you did then typically that would be a hard pull. A creditor can pull your bureau for a review at any time on an existing account (unless you live in Vermont), but they are always soft pulls in those instances. Creditors review your credit and have the right to determine what they will loan to you based on what's in your credit file and your ability to repay. It looks like in your case BofA was comfortable with you having 20k available and not 24k. Nothing illegal about that. That's their lending decision.

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