AMEX Unusual Activity.....?

[Anonymous]

Hey Guys,

I've had my Zync card for almost a year now, never charging more than 1500 / month usually on it.  I've never once been late, and have always paid online by the "please pay by date".  This month, I had more expenses than normal, and racked up about $6,000 in charges, with no problem and no declines.  My payment isn't due until the 23rd of August, but I received an email last week saying that due to unusuallly high spending, my card has been temporarily suspended and no further charges will be approved until payment has been received.  I've been reading lots of information about being FR'd, but this doesn't seem like the case since I wasn't told to call in.  I'm going to be making a payment today to clear things up, but the werid part about is it that my auto drafts from this account such as my insurance, and things like that have gone through fine the past day or two with no problems.  Has anyone had any similar issues with AMEX? Have I reached my "internal" limit?  I hope I haven't created a bad history with AMEX, and I hope I haven't since I've always paid on or before the please pay by date.  Will this look bad on my record with them?

[pizzadude]

I'm guessing that you likely hit your internal spending limit ~ assuming that you PIF I don't think that there will be any long term negative implications.

[Repo-ed]

Log in, and check your internal spending limit. You've likely hit it.

[SportBike4Life]

Internal spending limit... is this something that we can manually set as the primary card holder to automatically suspend our account?

[jamesdwi]

pay your bill, in a month or two your internal limit may be increased if your income supports the increase if you make 30k a year they are going to look at you funny if you spend 6000 a month and you can look forward to an FR, if you make 120k a year they will be happy to allow it. 

[Revelate]

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@SportBike4Life wrote:

Internal spending limit... is this something that we can manually set as the primary card holder to automatically suspend our account?

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It's an Amex safeguard so you don't run off with the keys in any given month pretty much.  Nothing you can do about it, though traditionally Amex does raise it over time as you demonstrate capability to pay things back.  Even NPSL cards have an internal limit, just not one that gets reported to the bureaus heh.

[tinuviel]

No, it won't look bad on your account. As others have said, it seems that you've reached your internal limit. Amex keeps track of your spending habits and payment patterns and will adjust your limit on a more or less continuous basis. If your spending habits creep up, you continue to pay on time and your income is in line with these habits, then Amex will raise your spending limit. Go ahead and pay the bill and all should be fine.

[migliogiorni]

Nothing to worry about pif  and eventually they may raise your spending limit, GL.

[Creditaddict]

Yes, Very normal if you make a big change in 1 month of what they are use to seeing... If you needed your card instantly you can call and authorize the payment in full out of the account that is linked to them on your profile and they will unlock your account to charging instantly even though payment won't clear for several days... I have had it lock up on a Friday before and I authorized payment for the next tue... as soon as she did that, she told me to tell the cashier to process and boom went through!

Over the years I think Amex has done some adjusting to how internal limits are done and sometimes they seem to do multiples of several things they use to use... Probably 6-12 years ago they pretty much upped your limit by 40-50% of your then internal line each month that you paid on time... (Clearly that can get you up over $50k in just a couple months depending, really even higher!

Then for a bit it seemed to increase by some 12 months rolling average

Then I had some issues when they actually went back in and like in my account example, charging about $12-$15k per month, then dropped down to the $3-$5k a month for a period of like 4-6 months and they brought the internal line down to under $5k based on the average over last 90 days... That's the last info I have outside of an actual hard limit since 2010.