Credit Cards

[imducky]

there's no real pattern to waking the amex fr beast. i personally think they are looking at the following;

do you breath?

do you live on this planet?

do you even have an amex issued amex?

if yes to the above, then you fit the profile for an fr.

they cut my limit. i called and was told it was due to lates on my mortgage. well that was flat wrong, so i challenged them on that. finally i reached someone who apologized for that allegation and explained that i have obtained or refi'd a mortgage in the last 7-10 years and i opened up a bunch of new accounts. neither i could argue against. she then explained that with all the new credit they got nervous, but i could request a credit line adjustment in 6 months. that's when i said i'll keep the account open, but don't expect me to call i'll never rqst anything from amex again

bottom line, i did just about everything that could trigger an fr (mort refi, opened up about 65k in new credit, refi'd cars several times in a year (to get sweet rates!), and tapped the luv button on amex's site at every opportunity), and the only aa i got was a cld from 4k to 500.

[fused]

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msheresy wrote:
So I just got my card in the mail on thursday and I have spent right @ $100. I try today to view my account and I see that it says it is suspended. I call and am notified that I am having a review done to verify income...blah blah blah. Heres the thing, I put that I made $32000 but I actually only make right @ $30000. Is this going to affect things? Will 2000 actually cause them to cancel my account? I'm really worried now because I was sooooo freaking happy that I got this card!

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Ordinarily you will hear me raving about Amex but not this time. Since you have not been an Amex card holder more than a week, you have NO leverage. You can either acquiesce or kick Amex to the curb. So long as you don't screw-up your overall util, I would choose the latter. If it was me (however), I would comply and then turn around and write them a nasty FOAD or ESAD letter.

[haulingthescoreup]

Ouch! Sorry to hear this. More of the AmEx giveth and the AmEx taketh away crap.

For everyone else applying to AmEx (or really, to anyone else), be sure that you can back up your claimed income with pay stubs, tax records, etc.

[Tovya]

Honestly, I've never been flagged to have my income confirmed by a CC issuer. What exactly do they allow for income verification? The reason I ask, is because I receive income from investments, the profits and base salary for being a CEO with a majority share, and my father's corporation pays me for being an advisor. Would they expect me to provide proof for all forms of income or just my tax return filings?

It hasn't happened to me yet, but would be good to know if it ever did....

[cheddar]

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Tovya wrote:
Honestly, I've never been flagged to have my income confirmed by a CC issuer. What exactly do they allow for income verification? The reason I ask, is because I receive income from investments, the profits and base salary for being a CEO with a majority share, and my father's corporation pays me for being an advisor. Would they expect me to provide proof for all forms of income or just my tax return filings?

It hasn't happened to me yet, but would be good to know if it ever did....

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They will require you to sign a form allowing them to pull your last two years of tax returns directly from the IRS.  This is the only income verification they will accept.  They will not look at your W2s or paystubs even if you beg them to.

[imducky]

amex fr's are very intrusive. they ask for acess to your irs return, they have you sign a form that grants them autorization to get it directly from the irs.

this means not only do they see your information, they get everyone else's that happen to be on your return.

some cu's just ask for pay stubs. one even asked me to fill out a finnacial disclosure, but i was asking for 24k unsecured and i was told they wanted this info as a condition of the app.

[fused]

AmEx has asked card holders who undergo a financial review to file out IRS form 4506-T and fax it to them. This ensures no card holder hands over falsified W-2s or 1099s. Check it out

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4506t.pdf

[Tovya]

Wow, that's pretty nuts. My dad has been an Amex card holder for about 25 years, and holds the Black now, but they've never asked for anything from him as far as I know (but then again he has a perfect track record with them as well).

If they ever did, he'd probablly tell them just to cancel the card as he is a pretty private person. He really doesn't need the credit anyway, he just likes whipping it out mostly ;-)

We bought a $1.5 million dollar crane with it just about a month ago, and he whipped the sucker out like he was a CIA agent whipping his badge out to a communist spy LOL.

[imducky]

Tovya wrote:

We bought a $1.5 million dollar crane with it just about a month ago,

now that's a no pre-set limit moment! just curious, how many points do you get for a 1.5 million dollar purchase?

oh, do they still double the manufacturers warranty for a crane as well?

Message Edited by imducky on 06-14-2008 09:24 PM

[cheddar]

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Tovya wrote:

We bought a $1.5 million dollar crane with it just about a month ago,

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Uhhh....

OK, all of a sudden my $2K Delta Skymiles doesn't seem so great.