@Anonymous wrote:
I handle all the accounting at my work and my boss who has been an amex user since 1987 has had many ridiculous changes to her accounts from AMEX. She had all 3 scores over 810 in October. Since October, they have gone down to high 700's due to her losing $45000 in personal available credit.
1) cancelled her $78,000 business capital line(which they just stopped offering the product)
2)Personal Blue was $40000 now at $15000 (havent had balance since 2003)
3)Business Delta Reserve was reduced from $45,000 to $25000(always pif, only used for delta flights)
4)Blue for Business was $80000, now $50000(no balance)
5)Personal Costco AMEX was $30000 now $10000.
6)had her platimum business card decline twice (pay in full every month... average $60,000 a month due to paying for all product on it to get points)
In all the letters she receives, it gives a list of reasons that "may" have influenced there decision. And the phone calls always end with the amex person saying"oh we are doing this to everyone" ... what a way to treat loyal customers huh
And I had to fax all the paperwork for her after she got the wonderful financial review phonecall in both Sept and in November. Even in the bad economy her business has increased sales by 40% and her personal income has gone up 50%. Now I can understand when people leave high balances and apply for a lot of cards but I really do not think that they need to decrease her $95000. just doesnt make sense
I don't understand why someone would need $273,000 worth of personal revolving credit. Obviously neither does AMEX now that they're getting burned by people overextending themselves in these tough times.
In the past 6 years, when people would spend more than they could pay back on credit cards, they would just hit their HOME ATM through a HELOC withdrawal. Then when they couldn't handle the HELOC payments, they would just refinance it all into a new loan, with cash out of course. The party is over with millions of Americans no longer able to use their home as an ATM, and unsecured creditors such as AMEX are the first to experience massive defaults. Thus, they're lowering all these excessive credit lines to more manageable and reasonable levels.
She still has over $100,000 in unsecured credit from AMEX, which is extremely generous & more reasonable than $273,000.
Here's a sample of someone who withdrew close to $1 million from their HOME ATM: http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blog/comments/shady-canyon-heloc-abuse/ . I'm sure they probably also had $250k worth of revolving credit available to them as well, with perfect payment history. That is, until the housing bubble burst and they are left with a home that's worth a lot less than what they owe. At that point, their last resort is to abuse the $250k of AMEX unsecured credit since the HOUSING ATM well has run dry.
Because of people like those profiled in the link above, even honest, successful, PIF executives need to understand that AMEX is in self-preservation mode during hard times when they cut an unreasonable $273k total of unsecured credit to $100k+ of unsecured credit.
