It appears that the crap economy is starting to hit my credit file, after having burned and pillaged my stock portfolio, my 401(k), and my Roth IRA.  

I generally run low balances on my credit cards and pay them off every month, and have never had a late payment on any of them.  So imagine my surprise when I get a letter from American Express indicating that my credit limit was cut from $30k to $5k due to something “adverse” on my credit report.  

I have three-bureau credit monitoring, and upon investigation, I discovered absolutely nothing different about any of my files.  A call to Amex netted me an obviously scripted response claiming that they had “found certain adverse information on my credit report.”  I told them that my own monitoring of the very same turned up no such adverse information other than the credit line decrease that she claimed was predicated upon said adverse infor … oh, would you look at that, a tautology!  How cute.  

A quick Google search returns a panoply of similar complaints against Amex, many quite colorful, some rather sad.  Speculation is rampant that due to their sickly financial condition, Amex has been aggressively and methodically contracting individual credit limits based on some seemingly esoteric criteria, such as billing address, number of children, and the phase of the moon.  (I made that last one up.)  I brought this speculation to my support rep’s attention.  Any connection to failing financial health, of course, was vehemently denied.  She reiterated that it was all my fault.

Strangely, BECU unilaterally increased my Visa Signature limit slightly about two months ago because of the very same “bad” credit Amex cited.  You know, if Amex can’t be up front about the real reason why they’re giving me a good shafting, I’m taking my business elsewhere.