For years, I’ve been a pretty big fan of Capital One. This includes regularly recommending their Savor (formerly SavorOne) card and opening a 360 Checking Account. Heck, I even kind of like their commercials — including the one where the spokesman apparently lives at the branch or Jen Garner parodying A League of Their Own for seemingly no real reason. However, this week, my wife received a letter from the bank that made me raise an eyebrow.
First, I should explain that my wife is actually the primary on our Savor card, which is why the missive was sent to her. With that context, what did it say? “We’re writing to let you know about an upcoming account review scheduled for February 2025.” What kind of review? As they explained, they’ve noticed that our highest card balance falls far below the limit they’ve set for that card. Because of this, they state that, after the review, our limit may be decreased.
Let me stop there and point out that it seems they’ve already done a “review” if they’re pointing these things out…
Anyway, the letter went on to say that we could opt out of this review “if you anticipate the spending active on this account to change.” Of course, this couldn’t be done online. Instead, if we wanted to halt this process, we’d have to call a provided phone number by mid-February.
So, why am I annoyed by this? While it’s true that we do indeed spend far less on our Savor card than the limit provides for, that’s by design! As you may know, one factor in determining your FICO credit scores is Credit Utilization. Basically, this just means how much of your allotted credit you use — so, if you’re credit limit is $10,000 and your balance is $1,000, your utilization would be 10%. Generally, it’s recommended that you keep utilization below 30%, but lower is always better. By the way, I know that Capital One is aware of this since they have an article about it on their site.
Not wanting to lower our limit for this reason, I went ahead and called the number. Thankfully, it was an automated system that didn’t require me to talk to anybody. Instead, after entering the last four digits of our card and then hitting ‘1’ to opt-out, it was done. Still, I think this whole situation is pretty dumb.
Look, I’m sure Capital One has its reasons for wanting to lower credit limits when customers aren’t using them, but this little episode did leave a bad taste in my mouth. Even if nothing has ultimately come from it (yet), it’s annoying that I even had to respond to it. Also, I suspect that their real goal here was to nudge us into spending more on the card. If that’s the case, they failed. Granted, I’m not so mad at them that I’m going to sock drawer the card but I’m also not going to make an effort to emphasize it either. So, with us proceeding with business as usual, we’ll see if we’re due for another “review” in the future.