Amex Review Within 60-days of account opening

[Anonymous]

I know this subject has been beaten to death but I thought I would post my recent experience. Not that it may mean much. I applied for a SPG Amex on 28 Oct 14. Was approved with a $10K limit. As a result of what I learnt on this forum I waited the 61 days and applied for a CLI, and was approved for $24K. So far so good. Spent about $5K on the SPG in the first month and then PIF.

I think just before Xmas, I applied for a Platinum Amex. Was approved. Spent about $2K during the December/Jan period. Ran the SPG card to about $8-9K. Sometime during mid January, send a partial payment of $7K to cover both accounts ($2K to the Platinum Card and $5K to the SPG card).

Most of my expenses are work related. Was travelling last week and received a phone call from Amex, stating that my account was being placed under review. The Plat card hadnt even cycled thru one statement yet. Amex person was very polite and the call was recorded so they follow a very tight script. Was o'dark hundred where I was was so wasnt really fully awake. At first, I was a bit put out that they wanted all this information (eg tax returns, bank statements, payslips etc). The pain in the butt is the fact that they placed both cards on hold and you have 15-days to furnish the information. In my case, I asked what would happen if I didnt provide the data, and they said that my limit on my SPG card could be reduced. They didnt tell me what would happen to my Plat card.

So I dutifully faxed them bank statements (2 months), payslips, salary confirmation (letter from HR stating my salary). Because I am not a US citizen, I also faxed them my green card and DL. Not that they asked for it. I havent filed US taxes yet because I only got my SSN mid last year and I work for a non US company (even though my salary is sent to me in USD here to my US account). 

A day passed and I called Amex back. They told me who the physical person was handling my review but she wasnt available. I tried to push for answers but again the script took over and while the agent was super polite, they wouldnt/couldnt tell me anything.

Another 24 hours passed, and the actual person handling my account called me. Told me the review was complete and that the temporary hold on both cards was now lifted. I pushed for more answers. Was it going to happen again? Was my account now flagged? The female agent was also following the script and basically assured me that my accounts would be fine from this point on.

I've read a lot of the review threads/posts on here and now I've gone through the review process, I dont really have a problem with it. As far as I could tell, Amex wanted me to confirm salary (which I was able to do to their statisfaction). I'm not sure if looking at bank statements says much but I had to show where the payments came from to the account. I have no idea if they take your bank statement balances as any indication of anything (although one guy I spoke to mentioned we look at "liquid funds available to pay the account").

To me, its simple. Its their gold. They get to make the rules. Yes, I have other cards I could have used, but I want the SPG Amex and I like having a charge card like Amex Plat. And because were just finalising  a mortgage, I had all the info to hand, so it literally took 10 mins to print out everything and fax to them.

YMMV...

[Imperfectfuture]

My credit union does manual reviews for everything. Couldn't get the copy for a small part of my annual income, but they said it was okay. I then stressed that what I provided wouldn't work (because 2014 is not taxable for me), but everything approved a ok, including portfolio income.

Since this worked for them (I really need to get a copy of my extra income), and this approximates the income reported to Amex, I should be good to go. I was worried if it ever came up, but looks like I am reporting annual income accurately (am using the guidelines provided on the cfpb website, especially related to retired folks).

I actually have more free cash than reporting (which is good).

I think the FR thing is way overblown. Apply for a business card, and you go for manual review. Congrats on your financial review survival (some of us need to do it just to unsecure cards and get cli's).

[Anonymous]

Still makes you wonder what alarm bells were set off to initiate the FR or if it was random.

[CreditCuriosity]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Still makes you wonder what alarm bells were set off to initiate the FR or if it was random.

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Some things I believe is random such as waking down the street and happening to get hit from bird poop from a bird flying way above you (yes this has happened to me , random is running into an old GF or wife while out with your new GF..  An Amex financial review is anything but random or they would just ask for the info upfront.. Just my take.

[red259]

That was a lot of available increase with amex in a short period of time. If you had a longer history with them I think they may have let it slide or at least I like to think that. 

[SunriseEarth]

Congrats on successfully navigating the FR.   I'm sure they simply want to make sure spending was in line with income.   They got the answers they wanted and I think you'll be just fine from this point forward.  

[Anonymous]

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@red259 wrote:

That was a lot of available increase with amex in a short period of time. If you had a longer history with them I think they may have let it slide or at least I like to think that. 

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I'm not sure. I've read on here where plenty of people have been granted the 3X CLI and then not bothered again. I'd like to think my more than frequent payment history (even in the short space of time the accounts were open) might have counted for something, but I think some pimply faced PhD person came up with some tricky algorithm which caught something in my spending pattern and decided to crawl up my butt with an Amex branded weed wacker 

[Imperfectfuture]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@red259 wrote:

That was a lot of available increase with amex in a short period of time. If you had a longer history with them I think they may have let it slide or at least I like to think that. 

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I'm not sure. I've read on here where plenty of people have been granted the 3X CLI and then not bothered again. I'd like to think my more than frequent payment history (even in the short space of time the accounts were open) might have counted for something, but I think some pimply faced PhD person came up with some tricky algorithm which caught something in my spending pattern and decided to crawl up my butt with an Amex branded weed wacker 

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Colorful, if not unduly miffed, analogy. 

[Skye12329]

I wonder if it was just for the purpose of spending habits. Like if your charging 7k+ a month(even though you only had it for a little while) on a card and PIF maybe they wanted you to basically verify you can PIF monthly and not like max the card out and only pay minimum if that makes sense. Just my guess on why that might have happened. 

Like you didnt just charge 7k and withdraw your 401k or something to cover the charges but rather you can afford to PIF or most of the bill when needed.

[Anonymous]

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@Skye12329 wrote:

Like you didnt just charge 7k and withdraw your 401k or something to cover the charges but rather you can afford to PIF or most of the bill when needed.

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Like I said, most of my charges are work related - but because our finance department is run by incompetent droids who clearly have unresolved issues with their robot parents, it can take 6-8 weeks to get your money from them. I typically charge $10K+ a month to my cards (and when I was based in another country used to regularly charge $80-100K a month) and not a peep from Amex. Actually, thats not quite true. When my spend exceeded $100K in a month there was a man from Amex waving his arms at me down the phone. Zero sense of humor as well. But it all worked out in the end...