Many of us are aware of the games Macy's is playing, now I can confirm something wacky is going on with Amex. I pulled my 3-in-1 report at Credit Secure today and I was shocked at what I saw. My Platinum card is reporting a "high balance" of $3xxx on my EX and EQ reports. Of course, I know this is wrong. My "high balance" should be reporting as $12,xxx. I was able to confirm this by looking over my older reports that I kept. TU hasn't updated this account for this month yet, but even with TU, its still reporting inaccurately. TU from last month has my "high balance" at $9xxx. It appears my Platinum account "high balance" has been reporting a lower amount every month since January of this year, with the exception of March. Something is CLEARLY wrong! I will call the folks at Amex first thing tomorrow morning.
For Amex Plat card holders, please check your reports. So far, my Amex Clear account has no reporting errors.
Update!
After making numerous calls, I finally have an answer to all of this. According to two different units at Amex (credit bureau unit and a higher up within CS), Amex charge cards will report the "high balance" on cards based on your spending habits. That is, they'll take the amount of your expenditures (charges) over the last 12-18 months and divide it by a number between 12-18. They couldn't tell me when they started doing this, but I noticed all hell broke lose at the beginning of this year. I haven't used my Platinum card that much over the last 13 or 14 months. Over the last 4 months or so, my high balance went from 12,xxx to 3,xxx. For the life of me, I have no idea why they're calculating the high balance this way. A high balance IS a high balance!
How do they gain? There is no rhyme or reason to what Amex is doing here.
@fused wrote:Update!
After making numerous calls, I finally have an answer to all of this. According to two different units at Amex (credit bureau unit and a higher up within CS), Amex charge cards will report the "high balance" on cards based on your spending habits. That is, they'll take the amount of your expenditures (charges) over the last 12-18 months and divide it by a number between 12-18. They couldn't tell me when they started doing this, but I noticed all hell broke lose at the beginning of this year. I haven't used my Platinum card that much over the last 13 or 14 months. Over the last 4 months or so, my high balance went from 12,xxx to 3,xxx. For the life of me, I have no idea why they're calculating the high balance this way. A high balance IS a high balance!
Strange. I'd tend to agree that a high balance is a high balance.
Something smells fishy.
