AA after using card at "low end" establishments?

[elim]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@pdxmike wrote:

A Federal Reserve study in 2010 found that CCCs, including Amex, MasterCard and 5 of the 25 largest banks, had performed AAs against cardholders for things like using their card at used clothing stores, pawn shops, casinos and other lower-end establishments. Even shopping at a discount store when you didn't previously could trigger it. They even said one issuer monitored new cardholders for cash advances or running up a balance at jewelry and electronics stores. The report minimized the extent of it, and CCCs said in 2010 that they stopped, but does anyone think this might explain a mysterious AA they had?

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With the advent of bluebird, a number of MSers (including me) started making purchases at Walmart for the first time.    No wonder we got shut down!

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  damn LTL... kudos on the huge scores

[Anonymous]

What makes you doubt banks don't use the information at their disposal to build more accurate behavioral models to better try to predict people's spending patters and probability of payments?

This in the age when Target knows a teenager is pregnant before she told her parents

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@pdxmike wrote:

A Federal Reserve study in 2010 found that CCCs, including Amex, MasterCard and 5 of the 25 largest banks, had performed AAs against cardholders for things like using their card at used clothing stores, pawn shops, casinos and other lower-end establishments. Even shopping at a discount store when you didn't previously could trigger it. They even said one issuer monitored new cardholders for cash advances or running up a balance at jewelry and electronics stores. The report minimized the extent of it, and CCCs said in 2010 that they stopped, but does anyone think this might explain a mysterious AA they had?

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With the advent of bluebird, a number of MSers (including me) started making purchases at Walmart for the first time.    No wonder we got shut down!

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Walmart also has really cheap ziploc bags as I've found out

[red259]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@pdxmike wrote:

A Federal Reserve study in 2010 found that CCCs, including Amex, MasterCard and 5 of the 25 largest banks, had performed AAs against cardholders for things like using their card at used clothing stores, pawn shops, casinos and other lower-end establishments. Even shopping at a discount store when you didn't previously could trigger it. They even said one issuer monitored new cardholders for cash advances or running up a balance at jewelry and electronics stores. The report minimized the extent of it, and CCCs said in 2010 that they stopped, but does anyone think this might explain a mysterious AA they had?

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With the advent of bluebird, a number of MSers (including me) started making purchases at Walmart for the first time.    No wonder we got shut down!

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Yep! That must have been the culprit!

[red259]

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@Anonymous wrote:

What makes you doubt banks don't use the information at their disposal to build more accurate behavioral models to better try to predict people's spending patters and probability of payments?

This in the age when Target knows a teenager is pregnant before she told her parents

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html

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There is no doubt they monitor spending patterns to market to you. Hell I buy a bottle of wine with my Amex and then next thing I know they are offering me discounts in the special offers about wine. That type of marketing as been going on for awhile. That is marketing though. I think that is a far cry from banks looking at things like a fee to a lawyers office or a purchase of condoms and guessing that you are going to get divorced and then taking adverse action against a customer who in all traditional aspects does not to be a credit risk. I think that is a much more extreme notion than what the article is talking about. 

[Anonymous]

Wouldn't be surprised if CCC's are still doing it . It wasn't too long ago when race , gender and address were factored into your "credit worthiness" . Some people believe your address is still to this day factored into your Fico score . A person living in the getto is more likely to default than a person living in a nice upscale neighborhood . That's how they see it .

[Gunnar419]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Wouldn't be surprised if CCC's are still doing it . It wasn't too long ago when race , gender and address were factored into your "credit worthiness" . Some people believe your address is still to this day factored into your Fico score . A person living in the getto is more likely to default than a person living in a nice upscale neighborhood . That's how they see it .

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I expect there's some truth to that (though of course banks would be very, very careful to avoid anything that might be seen as racist, sexist, etc.)

As to the study cited by the OP, though, I think it's telling that it was from 2010, which is not that long after the 2008 crash. Many ccs, and most notoriously Amex, were penalizing people for shopping at Walmart and so on because they were trying to figure out which customers were suddenly struggling, post 2008. I don't think those same standards apply now, even though others might.

If I ran a cc company, I'd definitely keep an eye on customers who were running up huge gambling tabs, though. That and some other things (not Walmart shopping) have got to be red flags. Even then, I'd balance that against a cardholder's overall profile. Is the person a well heeled high flyer who's good for the money or a gambling addict about to go bust? It would require multiple indicators to tell, so yes, I'm sure they're monitoring.

[Anonymous]

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@pdxmike wrote:

A Federal Reserve study in 2010 found that CCCs, including Amex, MasterCard and 5 of the 25 largest banks, had performed AAs against cardholders for things like using their card at used clothing stores, pawn shops, casinos and other lower-end establishments. Even shopping at a discount store when you didn't previously could trigger it. They even said one issuer monitored new cardholders for cash advances or running up a balance at jewelry and electronics stores. The report minimized the extent of it, and CCCs said in 2010 that they stopped, but does anyone think this might explain a mysterious AA they had?

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Certainly an interesting read.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@pdxmike wrote:

A Federal Reserve study in 2010 found that CCCs, including Amex, MasterCard and 5 of the 25 largest banks, had performed AAs against cardholders for things like using their card at used clothing stores, pawn shops, casinos and other lower-end establishments. Even shopping at a discount store when you didn't previously could trigger it. They even said one issuer monitored new cardholders for cash advances or running up a balance at jewelry and electronics stores. The report minimized the extent of it, and CCCs said in 2010 that they stopped, but does anyone think this might explain a mysterious AA they had?

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With the advent of bluebird, a number of MSers (including me) started making purchases at Walmart for the first time.    No wonder we got shut down!

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Oh ... you shopped at Walmart! Where was your mind? You must have lost your grounding and should seek forgiveness

[SomeGuyOnTheWeb]

I'm pretty sure this is no longer true.

I shop at "low end" establishments all the time (Save-A-Lot/Walmart instead of Publix, Goodwill/Ross instead of Macy's, etc.). Of course, that's because I'm cheap and I don't see the point in paying double for the (semi) same product.