I've had this same experience with Amex twice within 6 months. I was with them since 1993 holding both the green standard card and the gold card. My Gold card had a line of credit of $23K with a balance of only $5K never a late payment. I cancelled the lousy green card in Fall 06. Last year in March 07, while travelling for an assignment, I used the Gold card to pay for a week-long hotel stay, but the payment for the next week's stay was rejected. I used another card, rushed to my room and went online to check my account fearing fraud, just to find out my new line was reduced to barely the existing balance of $7K, and when I called Amex, they said it was due to too many inquiries on my Experian credit report.By now I am freaking out and thinking identity theft. I immediately got back online to buy my credit report just to find out there is nothing wrong with it and. They lied. So much for me trying to keep my credit card balance below 30% of the available credit to keep my FICO score at 750. Because of what Amex did, once that data hit the credit bureau, my FICO dropped by 30 points in a snap thanks to Amex.
It gets better, 4 months later, and on their own, they increased my line to $16K. Not trusting their practices now, I refrained from using the available credit, and Thank God I did because as soon as I refinanced my house two months later, they went in and clipped the credit line again to $8K, again barely enough available credit to cover the finance charges. I am just waiting to pay off the old balance and leave the account open with $0 balance forever and let THEM be the ones wasting money on maintain the account and sending their junk mail.
I still have all my documents. If there are more cases like this, we can file a class action suit for them causing harm to our credit worthiness for no fault of our own.
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