topic Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived! in General Credit Topics

Amex Financial Review - I survived!

Tiggr — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 19:47:34 GMT

I woke up last Friday with my cards suspended and lots of red on both of my Amex card accounts telling me to call them immediately where I was met with the financial review department. I have heard of FRs before and I have also heard that they are very rare and with just two cards, I never expected it to happen.

Here's what led to it:

I have been trying hard to hit the SUB on the gold card so I could get the 100K mr points. I got the card at the end of last year and immediately started making large purchases on it. I paid my motorcycle and car insurance in full (a ton of money as a college male). I also started making large purchases getting ready for marriage and graduation and definitely doing some extra spending on top. Despite all of this spending, it was well supported by my jobs and I always paid the entire balance as soon as the charge went through.

AMEX didn't like this, I had been spending much more than my reported 55K income would usually sustain. They had me send them the two most recent pay stubs from my jobs and also my two most recent bank statements. This was after the very inquisitive phone call where I had to explain all my sources of income and how I could manage to cobble together 55k as a college student. After a few business days, it seemed to have worked, mostly.

My Amex BCP CL has remained as 3k but they have assigned my Gold card a 4.3k SL, which doesn't really affect me that much. Anyways, that was my experience, scary, but at least I'm not barred from Amex and I still kept all my MR points.

Will that gold card SL affect my credit?

Will the gold card SL lead to me getting an SL on a future plat card?

Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived!

CreditPoor — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 23:56:35 GMT

lol, you didn't go through a FR, you went through a simple income verification and you didn't actually come out ahead.

I'll break it down further. You have a 3k card and now a restricted gold card for 4.3k after submitting some bank statements. In return AMEX got data on you that they now can

sell and believe me they make tons off of collected financial data.

I wouldn't classify this as a win because now I'm willing to bet CLIs will be smaller if at all and they'll certainly be keeping an eye on. I'll never understand why people will trade all their data and financials for cards that are rapidly deteriorating. AMEX is not what it used to be to be and hardly worth the hassle

As for Financial Review that would involve tax returns and a much deeper dive and the process is ridiculous if you ask me. They once asked me for tax returns and I told them to kick rocks. I'm not paying a credit card company $695 o years for a card and give them access to information they certainly have demonstrated they can't protect

Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived!

Tiggr — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 00:11:29 GMT

@CreditPoor wrote:
lol, you didn't go through a FR, you went through a simple income verification and you didn't actually come out ahead.

I'll break it down further. You have a 3k card and now a restricted gold card for 4.3k after submitting some bank statements. In return AMEX got data on you that they now can
sell and believe me they make tons off of collected financial data.

I wouldn't classify this as a win because now I'm willing to bet CLIs will be smaller if at all and they'll certainly be keeping an eye on. I'll never understand why people will trade all their data and financials for cards that are rapidly deteriorating. AMEX is not what it used to be to be and hardly worth the hassle

As for Financial Review that would involve tax returns and a much deeper dive and the process is ridiculous if you ask me. They once asked me for tax returns and I told them to kick rocks. I'm not paying a credit card company $695 o years for a card and give them access to information they certainly have demonstrated they can't protect

I'm considering it a win because the alternative was getting kicked to the curb by amex and being barred for about 10 years which Fs up my credit plan greatly. It definitely was a FR, it just seems like they've changed what they asked for few different times. I would've been screwed if they asked for a tax return, a lot of my income is non-taxable or not reported. I'm just happy to survive.

Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived!

Pppoolboy — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 04:42:52 GMT

@Tiggr

Whatever happened with this? Are you still a happy Amex cardholder?

Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived!

Tiggr — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:32:20 GMT

@Pppoolboy wrote:

@Tiggr
Whatever happened with this? Are you still a happy Amex cardholder?

I still have my Gold card with the same limit they assigned me, $4300. This also means that my other credit cards I have with them are ineligible for a credit limit increase until that PSL is gone. I do not expect either of these problems to change until I update my income which has not changed since this happened.

That being said, these really are not problems for me and they still offer me preapprovals and SUBs for their other cards.

Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived!

DONZI — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 07:47:26 GMT

More power to ya!

I'd consider yours a reasonable position too Vs loss of access directly to amex and their cards.

Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived!

SeanA — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:04:14 GMT

Glad you made it! That sucks you had to deal with that. Guess they needed to make sure you weren't a drug dealer or something.

Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived!

pizzadude — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:44:23 GMT

@Tiggr wrote:

Will that gold card SL affect my credit?
Will the gold card SL lead to me getting an SL on a future plat card?

To answer your questions, no the limit shouldn't affect your credit but will likely impact your ability to grow your limits with any current / future cards.

Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived!

AndrewF — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:09:26 GMT

The spending pattern probably flagged you as high risk for a rapid default.

New account, lots of spending, no payment activity yet. That will do it.

Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived!

AndrewF — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:12:39 GMT

@pizzadude wrote:
@Tiggr wrote:

Will that gold card SL affect my credit?
Will the gold card SL lead to me getting an SL on a future plat card?
To answer your questions, no the limit shouldn't affect your credit but will likely impact your ability to grow your limits with any current / future cards.

Canceled my spouse's Gold Card this year. Only got it because of a truly insane amount of MR points on a welcome offer. Since you have to pay the first AF no matter what, and they claw back the bonus if you don't wait until the second AF posts, and they refund the second AF if you cancel within 30 days of the second AF finalizing, that's the optimal time to cancel.

The rep said no retention offer was available. The most valuable credit on a $325 AF card is $100 at Resy. Not a tough call to cancel. Anyway, the MR points were worth over $1,000 all by theemselves. So maybe this gets you in pop-up jail on personal cards, but he's already got the welcome offer on most personal cards and a Blue Business Cash elevated offer, so there's very little that means now because of the Once in a Lifetime language on the offers.

Re: Amex Financial Review - I survived!

Tiggr — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:17:34 GMT

I appreciate the replies everyone but this thread keeps on being necrod from over a year ago.

Yes I still have a SL despite a flawless payment history and heavy use of the card. That is most likely due to my income not changing between then and now, it was pretty ambitious to begin with and I was lucky to be able to prove it to them.