Did I just get shafted by American Express for no reason????

[bourgogne]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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Why make the limit 10k when they only want you to put 2k on the card?  Why make the minimum payment 100 dollars when they want you to pay 1000 dollars on it?

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Look at it this way:

• I am a borrower of your money.  Do you think I am trustworthy if I borrow money every month to buy $500 worth of groceries but generally pay it off pretty quickly?
• How about if I borrow $5000 a month from you for an online casino or something like that but take a year to pay it off, or maybe 2 years?
• What if I also took cash advances out and took forever to pay them back?

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is this retort only for frogman1? just came to agree with you.  the entire credit game has to do with only one thing, risk.  even though lenders offer cash advances, balance transfers, balance carry, etc. they are graded as higher risk actions than just swipes.  banks like clean, if all a person does is use the card and not amass lines they will never tap into then there will seldom be issues.  some here are rebuilding and chasing limts as a result to measure their progress.  that is fine, just know there is a risk downside to it

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@bourgogne wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

I think if everyone just stuck with what the OP asked instead of picking apart his or her original post and poking fun at it and then reading how wonderful everyone has it with this and that vacation, savings, checking & and back up accounts and then back up back up accounts, the OP may have answered by now. The OP is like "why bother".

You scared the OP away. I wouldn't answer you either.

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It sucks that American Express did this to him.  Nothing he can do about it except not be dependent on them in the future.  They can do this to anyone at any time for no reason at all.  

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Not to be incendiary but you sound like the op has nothing to do with this situation, like it happened out out of the blue.  Imo nothing happens at random and that we are generally the cause of our situations.  We are generally not in control of the outcome of our lives and most of our thoughts during the day are lies to ourselves.  How about them apples lol.  Donny is spot on, the op is gone…either amex will restore the  cl or they won’t.  nobody will know what really happened.  Just like life.

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Why make the limit 10k when they only want you to put 2k on the card?  Why make the minimum payment 100 dollars when they want you to pay 1000 dollars on it?

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Agreed!

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

As someone who has worked with banks as a consultant, the last thing you ever want to do on the phone is get heated or threaten to take your business elsewhere.

CSRs can (and do) label some customers as "confrontational" or "threatening" and that can stick in your profile forever.  When future CSRs pull up your account they may see it -- and worse, if you're in that group, you may automatically get forwarded to their low priority CSRs forever.

Definitely best to be on good behavior when calling banks even though you're the customer.  Really any business that can track customer interaction can label you confrontational/aggressive and you may see service drop.

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Geez Amex must have my old accounts flagged and alarmed. I can hear the buzzers going off if I ever get another Amex card (extermly unlikely). But, it is a two way street if your CSRs treat their customers like garbage then they are free to walk away and take their business elsewhere. No problem in calling out CSRs on their b.s., at least in my opinion. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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Why make the limit 10k when they only want you to put 2k on the card?  Why make the minimum payment 100 dollars when they want you to pay 1000 dollars on it?

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Look at it this way:

• I am a borrower of your money.  Do you think I am trustworthy if I borrow money every month to buy $500 worth of groceries but generally pay it off pretty quickly?
• How about if I borrow $5000 a month from you for an online casino or something like that but take a year to pay it off, or maybe 2 years?
• What if I also took cash advances out and took forever to pay them back?

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If the creditor doesn't want you to borrow $18,000, then they shouldn't give you that limit in the first place.

Obviously if you suddenly become "too much" of a credit risk by borrowing the full limit that they've extended you, then they shouldn't have extended that credit limit at all. 

AMEX extends a particular limit because they're confident you'll be able to pay it back either every month or at some point down the road without defaulting. To offset the minor risk that the card holder defaults on their balance, there's this thing called interest, which is above 15% per year of the balance on most card, and goes up to the mid 20% range, well above inflation. 

If AMEX doesn't want people carrying large balances, they should stick to charge cards and stop offering revolvers. 

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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If AMEX doesn't want people carrying large balances, they should stick to charge cards and stop offering revolvers. 

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It's not your money.  It's AMEX's and their investors.  They have every right and privilege to decide how to measure future risk based on current and past actions compared to their internal analyses of past charge-offs.

For every one of these types of posts, you have hundreds if not tens of thousands of folks who have zero issues and earn great rewards or use their credit line to temporarily get through a temporary cash flow reduction.

This ONE user most likely did something or a combination of somethings that triggered AMEX's red flag circuit.  What percentage of AMEX customers got AA on that day?  Very few.

I am an investor in NYSE:AXP and the stock still hasn't recovered to 2014 highs -- so I am thankful that they're careful with their portfolio.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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Why make the limit 10k when they only want you to put 2k on the card?  Why make the minimum payment 100 dollars when they want you to pay 1000 dollars on it?

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Look at it this way:

• I am a borrower of your money.  Do you think I am trustworthy if I borrow money every month to buy $500 worth of groceries but generally pay it off pretty quickly?
• How about if I borrow $5000 a month from you for an online casino or something like that but take a year to pay it off, or maybe 2 years?
• What if I also took cash advances out and took forever to pay them back?

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If the creditor doesn't want you to borrow $18,000, then they shouldn't give you that limit in the first place.

Obviously if you suddenly become "too much" of a credit risk by borrowing the full limit that they've extended you, then they shouldn't have extended that credit limit at all. 

AMEX extends a particular limit because they're confident you'll be able to pay it back either every month or at some point down the road without defaulting. To offset the minor risk that the card holder defaults on their balance, there's this thing called interest, which is above 15% per year of the balance on most card, and goes up to the mid 20% range, well above inflation. 

If AMEX doesn't want people carrying large balances, they should stick to charge cards and stop offering revolvers. 

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I agree 100%...

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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If AMEX doesn't want people carrying large balances, they should stick to charge cards and stop offering revolvers. 

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It's not your money.  It's AMEX's and their investors.  They have every right and privilege to decide how to measure future risk based on current and past actions compared to their internal analyses of past charge-offs.

For every one of these types of posts, you have hundreds if not tens of thousands of folks who have zero issues and earn great rewards or use their credit line to temporarily get through a temporary cash flow reduction.

This ONE user most likely did something or a combination of somethings that triggered AMEX's red flag circuit.  What percentage of AMEX customers got AA on that day?  Very few.

I am an investor in NYSE:AXP and the stock still hasn't recovered to 2014 highs -- so I am thankful that they're careful with their portfolio.

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I am investor too. I bought twice in February of 2016 one purchase is up 62 percent the other 60 percent.  That is not even including the dividends.  Did you not buy any more stock then?  I only have 72 shares though wish I had bought more.  

[Anonymous]

I follow Harry Browne's "Permanent Portfolio" and have been since 97 or so.  Been buying AXP since the late 90s (my spreadsheet of returns only goes back to 2005 tho) and I've bought bank stocks consistently and regularly since then to the tune of almost 2% of my net worth!

2009ish to 2014ish saw 900%+ increases in value of AXP, but then it fell almost 50% from 2014ish to 2016.  Now it's up about 80% since those lows so I am basically back to the valuation I had in 2014 -- but I have been buying (dollar cost averaging as usual).

AXP is not even worth 0.3% of my overall net worth though, but I still care how they manage their portfolios.  If someone got a lot of CLIs because they were managing credit wisely but then all of a sudden they have 3 months of curious and risky spending behavior, I think the bank SHOULD AA just to be safe.

[HeavenOhio]

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@Anonymous wrote:
If the creditor doesn't want you to borrow $18,000, then they shouldn't give you that limit in the first place.If AMEX doesn't want people carrying large balances, they should stick to charge cards and stop offering revolvers. 

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That's certainly logical. But it's not reality, and it's not just AMEX. The reality is that high utilization has to be handled with care. People who've been around these forums know that. And newcomers to these forums learn that, hopefully before getting themselves into a pickle.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I wanna see what OPs situation was on other cards. I would think running amex up to 75% should be no big deal figure three quarters of what theyre giving but thats just my own thinking no real basis. But obviously if recent payments are only 100 bucks or so then that would not fly.

Woulda been heated after getting India on the phone just because it would have made it seem like I wouldn't get anywhere.. but a couple months to reduce balance by half is somewhat decent. Maybe a BT from another card for some or all of 50% of balance then see if they jerk you around in the future again 'randomly' ..

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luke5 that's a great idea! I would do the BT for sure.