The card companies have been slashing credit lines across the board. Makes sense, given that American consumers in general aren’t great credit risks right now. And I highly doubt that a supervisor would have been able to intercede for you, even if you were transferred to one. This stuff is done algorithmically. I also wonder how much damage was done to your credit score by the lowered available credit limit — have you checked? It could be minimal.

If this had been a random credit audit and lowered credit line, that might be different. As you say, these are tough times. My credit card issuer raised my APR and I have no objections to that because their reasoning was “we’re sorry; times are tough.”

But what is immensely frustrating to Web and I (I’ve not been bitten by this myself, though I’ve commented on it here and there) is when they use the fact that you’re using their service as a justification to limit their service. If you only have a $16,000 line of credit when you’re not using the credit, then that’s not really a $16k line of credit, is it?

As circumstances change, issuers and banks should certainly have the right to change contract terms, but they should not be able to do so immediately.

My personal take is that there should be a 6-month or one year waiting period between an announced change and the change taking effect. Further, any APR increases should only apply to new debt. Give people a little time to get their house in order so that they can try to make alternate credit arrangements. With this in mind, maybe a 1-year lag is better than 6 months since we’re talking about not only paying off what you owe, but also getting the credit score back up to get credit elsewhere.

On a sidenote, my college roommate (and Web’s former housemate) Hubert had something similar happen to him back before the credit market hit the skids. We should not be too tempted to blame bank shenanigans on the current credit crunch. They’ll use whatever excuse they can find. And honestly, at this time, they should be placing more rather than less value on people like Web that do not have a history of financial irresponsibility.