AMEX excessive soft pulls

[Anonymous]

My Amex Blue Cash is paid in full every month. Available CL is $12,000. I've had the card for 16 months (backdated to 2004, though), always paid in full, never late.

Recently, I've applied for three more credit cards that I wanted to add to my portfolio. A couple of days after the first hard pull for a new card, Amex soft pulled me on Experian. A week later, again. Then, another week later, yet again! That was Sept. 15. I haven't seen any more soft pulls. I feel like either Amex is distrustful of me or they are really desperate and afraid.The first two soft pulls were just listed as American Express, the third (most recent one) was listed as "Amex Account Review."The address on the report is Amex, El Paso on all three of them.  I have not received any communication from them (letter or phone call).I hope they leave me the heck alone and appreciate my being a good customer.

I have no bad accounts or anything negative on my report. Just a week ago, I paid my balance in full as soon as it became due ($400ish). My overall utilization of credit on my report is 8%.

How much is too much? Can anyone bring sense to their weekly interest in me? I feel monitored!

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:

My Amex Blue Cash is paid in full every month. Available CL is $12,000. I've had the card for 16 months (backdated to 2004, though), always paid in full, never late.

Recently, I've applied for three more credit cards that I wanted to add to my portfolio. A couple of days after the first hard pull for a new card, Amex soft pulled me on Experian. A week later, again. Then, another week later, yet again! That was Sept. 15. I haven't seen any more soft pulls. I feel like either Amex is distrustful of me or they are really desperate and afraid.The first two soft pulls were just listed as American Express, the third (most recent one) was listed as "Amex Account Review."The address on the report is Amex, El Paso on all three of them.  I have not received any communication from them (letter or phone call).I hope they leave me the heck alone and appreciate my being a good customer.

I have no bad accounts or anything negative on my report. Just a week ago, I paid my balance in full as soon as it became due ($400ish). My overall utilization of credit on my report is 8%.

How much is too much? Can anyone bring sense to their weekly interest in me? I feel monitored!

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Don't worry about it. They're just curious, because you're doing something that's out of pattern.

One big reason that lenders worry about inqs (and therefore applications for new credit) is that they wonder if you're having cash flow problems, and maybe you're scrambling for new credit, trying to keep afloat. So they're checking to see if you're still apping, and if your balances are starting to rise on other accounts. If you're done apping, and if you keep pretty much the same level of reported balances, they'll probably give you a few more good sniffs and then go back to their usual frequency.

Every now and again I get a cluster of softs on my reports, from different AmEx locations. I've never had any consequences from this.

[Anonymous]

Thanks. I've read that this is Amex's wont. However, it shows you right there that you can never see good overall CL as a "buffer" or protection for something unforseeable in the future. As soon as something is wrong with your credit, they will smell a rat and reduce it right away, even if it doesn't pertain to your account with them.

I will give Amex no reason for any adverse actions and I hope I can grow my CL with them in the future with diligent and faithful paying behavior. However, it is a bunch of nonsense to think that Amex is any better than the other creditors out there.

I even wonder if they have a small department that reads posts from people on sites like myfico.com and then tries to link the people to their accounts, thus getting more inofficial insight. Having seen what I have seen, it might as well be possible. Big brother is watching us, haha!

[laz98]

several of my creditors have done this to me at one time or another.  in my case, i think it's because my cards' balances jump around a lot.

[Anonymous]

AMEX/AMEX2/AMEX Acount Review, pull Soft Pulls on my Experian all the time, and I have no clue why.

I own a business, but have never personally held a card with them, and don't plan on it in my lifetime.

They seem completely overrated from what I perceive anyways.