How can credit card issuers get away with these dirty deeds?
Some lenders do this out of ignorance (unfortunately, they’re in the minority). Most do it to gain a competitive advantage. Credit card issuers know that when they don’t report your credit limit accurately it can screw up your credit scores. In fact, about 5 years ago a disturbing trend started taking place with the top 50 credit card issuers. Two of the largest issuers stopped reporting credit limits to all three credit reporting agencies. Soon after, other large credit card issuers jumped on the bandwagon and withheld their customers’ credit limits. After about six months it was more common to see a missing or manipulated credit limit than it was to see an accurate one. It got so bad that Fair Isaac Corporation performed a quick analysis and determined that the practice of not reporting accurate credit limits hurts some consumers’ FICO scores. Why in the world would credit card companies refuse to report real credit limits when they know it will hurt their customers’ FICO scores? In
