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I have to say that is EXACTLY what I thought when I read that - that doesn't sound like they're talking about too many inquiries, it sounds like they don't like the fact that you check your own credit score/history regularly. Which is pretty worrying...
I was idly wondering along these lines yesterday... that the CCCs must be increasingly wise to all this score-checking, FICO-maximising behavior and that people are becoming expert in manipulating their own credit scores, and I was wondering if that's something they don't approve of. Hmm.
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my default reaction to the "amex is watching us" argument - what i do at my job sounds so much more involved and difficult than monitoring people's credit scores, i wouldn't be surprised if they had an automated monitor of sudden increases or decreases in your score (and that's all that your score is - a number) and then manually reviewed and ups or downs, but that's different than people watching our every move, which i sincerely doubt the people over at amex have the time and energy for.
in a sense, fico score maximizers can be a serious liability. if you have nosebleed high fico scores and you want a mortgage, i wouldn't be surprised if you were asked to close some of your revolving credit lines to make you less of a "bank liability", even though as far as FICO is concerned, you're totally in the clear.
however, because fico scoring is actually pretty good with regard to regressing people back to the mean, the second you've got a 30 day late or anything like that, you'll drop a huge amount (whereas someone with a middling score would not). so i have a relatively high ex score (749), but i only have three years of history. what's keeping my score up is low util (which i can get even lower by paying down my balances) and the lack of any foul-ups. but a 30 day late will really knock me down the ladder more than most other people because of the length of my history and how high it is, relatively.
