These stories make me mad!! It's just so wrong to do that to their customers! But many banks have big problems now and have to pull these tricks just to stay afloat.

I've got a Chase Travel Rewards MC at 8.65% with no recent changes in the rate or the limit. I have a >$20k limit, even though I have never put more than about $5k on it in a billing cycle, and I've almost never carried a balnce of more than $2k.

I also have an MBNA MC account which I haven't used in years, but they haven't tried to close it on me yet. It used to be my primary, but they jacked the rate from 8% to 13% a few years back and wouldn't step back, so I just switched my charging to the Chase card.

I don't know why they haven't taken a swipe at me yet - maybe because Chase has not had the problems many other large banks have been having, so they are not battening down the hatches (closing inactive accts) or screwing customers (see above) like other banks have, or maybe it's because I've got >800 credit scores across the board and I put a lot of activity on my primary card (~$2k/mo). Dunno... maybe both.

PS - the Chase Travel Rewards card is an great card if you want to get travel bennies from your CC. I found out about it at cardoffers.com.