American Express Account Holds - ALL Accounts!

[Creditaddict]

I called into Amex today on "husbands" Starwood (we just got married and this will make more sense to the mention in a minute and I'm account manager so we are clear why and how I called) Anyway... I called Starwood about the interest rate 19.9 or something... I think we just came off our 0% promotion so I was a little shocked by the rate since we used the card for a few guests at the wedding and a brunch we hosted at hotel.  Anyway I had not logged in today and I was greeted after a 16 minute hold with I'm actually in the financial review department and your accounts are currently locked and that's why your call automatically came to me! (Not what you want to hear from Amex!)

She started asking about the Plum card and if still owned that company - yes

the Cash Plus Business - still own - yes.

So the issue is 2 transactions on the Starwood to the same company that is the Plum card she told me.

I said oh yes, we got married and it's a catering company so we had it catered by our company!

She said well you can't pay your company on an American Express Card.

I said it's a personal card, why not (I knew the answer she was going to give already) but I really hadn't even thought about it when I made the payments since we have a contract just like a regular customer I assumed it would avoid any issues like this.

Well since they were locked she stated now they wanted to do a financial review and IF they are unlocked if any sort of charges to companies that we own happen on any of the cards again they will all be closed with no further action.

Once I agreed to that, she said if you want to call the bank we can verify up to 2 accounts that you pay your Amex accounts with and get current balance and last 2 statement balances or average over 60 days (Chase doesn't do the average over 60 so he provided last 2 statement balances on the catering checking and our personal checking.)

She said it was submitted and she will call back tomorrow with response, she "Felt" that if anything, they would place hard limit on the Plum and Platinum charge and she didn't think anything about the 2 credit cards (Starwood Personal and Cash Plus Business both about maxed at current moment)

I asked her if there were any issues I was willing to close Platinum Charge but she said they consider each card on it's own so it would not help or matter about closing one or multiple.

Little more info:

The 2 charges on the personal Starwood to our catering company were around $2k and $3k

The Starwood balance is currently about $12k out of $13,400 (was $0 2 months ago and about $2500 last month)

Plum is $0 (Monthly average lately $6000-$8000)

Platinum is $0

Cash Plus for Business balance is $24k out of $25k and 0% currently

I'll update when I hear back!

[Discover2016]

Wow, that is crazy, hope the FR passes with no issues. 

[Discover2016]

I remember on this forum somebody posted that they paid a company that they owned with a personal Amex and that Amex went crazy and closed the accounts, they seem to really dislike that, Chase too if memory serves. It's a good sign though that they didn't close outright and are going through with FR instead. Good luck!

[linux007969]

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@Discover2016 wrote:

I remember on this forum somebody posted that they paid a company that they owned with a personal Amex and that Amex went crazy and closed the accounts, they seem to really dislike that, Chase too if memory serves. It's a good sign though that they didn't close outright and are going through with FR instead. Good luck!

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Well I had a simular issue.... I used all 5 of my Amex, personal and business with paypal all to the same person, which was a friend and it caught up with me and Amex finally had enough and closed all of my account out..... its a long story but you will find it in the rebuilding section.

[Anonymous]

Yes, this seems to be happening a lot (or at least reported here a lot).   I guess one "solution" is not to have biz cards and personal cards with the same issuer, but that ruins the point of going with a program like MR or UR, where you want to combine the points from both.

From the issuer's perspective though, paying your own company COULD be just a more sophisticated version of the newbie MS thought: "I know, I will set up an account with square and swipe my (high reward) credit card a lot of times".  In this case, it wasn't, but they obviously keep a close eye on these things.

[Creditaddict]

UPDATE:

I have not received the call from the lady yet so accounts are still showing locked online but I did receive e-mails with the hard limits for the 3 accounts:

Platinum Personal Charge - $5k limit (odd since we don't use it and last time I "checked spending ability" it was declined for just $1k!

Plum Business Charge - $3100 limit (WTH, we use $6k-$8k every month and early pay the balance every month!!! This hurts... The cash flow of the business currently will make it very hard to make 2 payments in a month but at least it's on and I can set up alerts when we hit $2500 in spending to make moves before things get declined.

Simply Cash Plus - $26k limit which is $1k above our actual limit - I'm surprised they are allowing anything over!

All and all I'm happy with the results since they didn't close anything and seems like they are going to release everything once the lady that is handling the accounts comes in

[Anonymous]

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@Creditaddict wrote:

  Anyway I had not logged in today and I was greeted after a 16 minute hold with I'm actually in the financial review department and your accounts are currently locked.

The Starwood balance is currently about $12k out of $13,400 

Cash Plus for Business balance is $24k out of $25k 

 Plum card- monthly spend 6k-8k

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Sorry this happened, CA. I think the two big red flags are the ones I bolded above.  You mentioned you also put $8,000 on the Plum last month so that combined with having those very high balances most likely sounded an alarm.

Their concerns about combining business and personal probably came later, but I have a feeling that the above high utilization and balances, as well as large amounts being sent through the cards ($96,000 in charges per year sent through on just the Plum card) started the initial algorithm spike in the system. Hope it all works out.

[CreditCuriosity]

Obviously you know what was done wrong charging on personal card to your catering business which you have business cards with.   Glad it came out somewhat ok, could of been alot worse  Thanks for the info and glad they didn't shut you off completly.

[CreditUnionFan]

Congrats, CA, on your wedding!

I think the other posters pointed out that maxing out the two newer accounts, and then using your personal cards at your business, all combined to form the grounds of a FR. There are always internal risk metrics and while one thing by itself might not be an issue, when several items line up or add up, then it sets off the alarms.

Glad to hear that the accounts stay open. With time Amex will likely forgive and increase some of those limits. Probably not until they see you pay off the current balances, but many lenders do just that - let you struggle for a while and then when they've been paid off, they start making you offers again.

[Credit_hawk]

Congrats on your wedding! I agree with both what Discover and Credit Curiousity said. As soon as I saw you used your card to pay your own company I was not surprised this happened. To what Discover said, somebody posted about this not long ago with a similar outcome. They certainly don't like that at all. Hope it gets resolved and hope they don't start CLDing your 26k card as you pay the balance down. Good luck and thanks for sharing!