With a salary of more than £100,000, an impeccable credit file and a record of paying off his spending in full each month, Colin Batabyal thought it would be easy to extend the limit on his credit card.

But his struggle to borrow a few thousand pounds extra, even temporarily, shows the extent to which banks are cutting back.

Colin, 47, has a Morgan Stanley card that rewards spending with a 1% cashback. Colin and his wife Helen, 45, use it for day-today spending before paying the bill in full each month.

Helen and Colin, who live with their daughter Shauna, 17, near Redhill, Surrey, were issued with replacement cards at the end of April. Colin was asked to contact Morgan Stanley to activate the cards. At the same time, he decided to request an increase on his credit limit from £7,600. But his request was turned down.

What made the rejection more galling is that Colin, a director of insurer esure, believes he is an excellent credit risk.

'I've an impeccable credit score, no county court judgments and no outstanding card balances,' he says. 'We pay off card bills each month and I have a six-figure salary.'

After an initial rejection, Colin was determined to have a fair hearing. After three weeks and several phone calls, he managed to speak to a credit underwriter, but was still told increasing the limit was not possible.

'They said there was a blanket ban on any new cards getting a higher limit,' says Colin. 'I felt this was an over-reaction. The banks have been lending all over the place and then, when they were caught with their pants down and bad debts they start to treat everyone like an idiot.'

The case has echoes of Egg's decision in February to cancel the cards of 161,000 customers it deemed to be bad credit risks. But it soon emerged that many of these had impeccable credit scores.

Price comparison service uSwitch.com says: 'The banks wrote off £17.3bn of bad debts in 2007. Credit card companies have had a rough ride and have tightened their lending criteria.'

The Morgan Stanley card is now part of the Goldfish card business, which was acquired by Barclaycard in February. After Financial Mail contacted Barclaycard, it decided to review Colin's case.

Barclaycard says: 'The customer service has not been up to our usual standards. An offer to call back the customer was not followed through and this case did not get reviewed properly. A common-sense look suggests there is no way that this customer is not going to make payments.

'We will be getting in touch with Mr Batabyal directly to offer an apology and to arrange to increase the credit limit.'

Barclaycard denies there was any blanket ban on increasing credit limits: 'We always try to judge each case on its merits and have both increased and reduced limits over the past 12 months.'