@Anonymous wrote:
@Aim_High wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Aim_High wrote:
@Remedios wrote:I get being proactive and minimizing loses, but cant do that while handing out $35K grocery cards, or approving kids 2 years out of high school for 5 cards who are on verge of default. They are pretty ficoing obvious based on their threads, so this "great and complex algorithm that catches everything" is really not all that great.
Poor AMEX. They seem to have the mistaken impression that they are still the King of Cards they were 30+ years ago. The market has changed. And consumers have a lot more choices today. Meanwhile, they've diluted the quality of their products by giving them out much more loosely, just like @Remedios described. When I came on this forum, I was shocked at their reputation for being one of the lenders the community recommended for early in a building or rebuilding process. Sure enough, since then I've seen lots of approvals with 600-ish scores and thin profiles. For us older forum members, it's actually kinda sad to see how far they have faded over the years from what I remember. Carrying an AMEX card used to really mean something special. Not anymore, unless maybe you qualify for the Centurion card.
I feel sooooo bad that people have one less way to flex on others now that AMEX will give regular people a chance. It's such a travesty that more people have access to a decent lender now.
You missed the point @Anonymous. This wasn't meant to be a slap against everyday people who rebuild or have limited resources or have financial struggles. And by the way, my scores and income have not always been nearly so high, so this isn't an "us-versus-them" issue. I had as much as $80K in credit debt a few years ago and you can imagine my scores. So I've been on both sides. I was just making an observation about how the market has changed but AMEX still acts in some ways like it hasn't changed. Meanwhile, they act like they can do what they want without respecting their cardholders dignity or the impact on their lives by unpredictable lending limits. If nothing else, any changes should have been communicated better by them up-front IMO.
One bank will always be the most selective lender in approving applicants; somebody has to be the most conservative. The point was that AMEX used to be one of if not the LAST card someone would probably carry in building or rebuilding, not one of the first and that their much more loose underwriting has probably contributed to more paranoia about what their cardholders are doing.
I don't really think that we can extrapolate a pattern of paranoia from a small subset of people on a forum that basically make a run for all the cards they can. If you want to see a real paranoid lender, look at Chase and their total shutdowns for credit seeking. AMEX and many other lenders likely find all of us with 10+ cards to be very risky and worth keeping their eyes on. With how popular their charge cards are, we would have heard a lot more elsewhere if people were having problems with them all of the time. Its unfortunate that this happened to SJ but considering that BoA took the extreme action of a total shutdown, it doesn't surprise me that other lenders are feeling antsy too. The bottom line is that six figures of personal debt is a huge red flag and algorithms don't care about circumstances or history.
Perhaps not history (though I am pretty sure Chase takes my history into account with some of their behavior towards me) but they absolutely take circumstances into account.
Billing address combined with Zillow Estimate - mortgage = decent chunk of net worth even without what amounts to income and sometimes asset disclosure via 4506-T or whatever.
Why would any lender truly worry about 100k in revolving debt if home equity is worth 1.2 million on a 300k mortgage for example? That's 700k on a cash out refi to pay off debt, or a big honking chunk of equity that a court can easily be convinced to tack a lien onto if the borrower flakes.
That's just one super easy example, but the algorithms are far more sophisticated than simply just seeing "oh look 100k! EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!" when it comes to their tradelines.'
ETA: I agree with most of the rest of your post Saeren if that wasn't clear, was just picking on a small part of it 
.
@Revelate wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Aim_High wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@Aim_High wrote:
@Remedios wrote:I get being proactive and minimizing loses, but cant do that while handing out $35K grocery cards, or approving kids 2 years out of high school for 5 cards who are on verge of default. They are pretty ficoing obvious based on their threads, so this "great and complex algorithm that catches everything" is really not all that great.
Poor AMEX. They seem to have the mistaken impression that they are still the King of Cards they were 30+ years ago. The market has changed. And consumers have a lot more choices today. Meanwhile, they've diluted the quality of their products by giving them out much more loosely, just like @Remedios described. When I came on this forum, I was shocked at their reputation for being one of the lenders the community recommended for early in a building or rebuilding process. Sure enough, since then I've seen lots of approvals with 600-ish scores and thin profiles. For us older forum members, it's actually kinda sad to see how far they have faded over the years from what I remember. Carrying an AMEX card used to really mean something special. Not anymore, unless maybe you qualify for the Centurion card.
I feel sooooo bad that people have one less way to flex on others now that AMEX will give regular people a chance. It's such a travesty that more people have access to a decent lender now.
You missed the point @Anonymous. This wasn't meant to be a slap against everyday people who rebuild or have limited resources or have financial struggles. And by the way, my scores and income have not always been nearly so high, so this isn't an "us-versus-them" issue. I had as much as $80K in credit debt a few years ago and you can imagine my scores. So I've been on both sides. I was just making an observation about how the market has changed but AMEX still acts in some ways like it hasn't changed. Meanwhile, they act like they can do what they want without respecting their cardholders dignity or the impact on their lives by unpredictable lending limits. If nothing else, any changes should have been communicated better by them up-front IMO.
One bank will always be the most selective lender in approving applicants; somebody has to be the most conservative. The point was that AMEX used to be one of if not the LAST card someone would probably carry in building or rebuilding, not one of the first and that their much more loose underwriting has probably contributed to more paranoia about what their cardholders are doing.
I don't really think that we can extrapolate a pattern of paranoia from a small subset of people on a forum that basically make a run for all the cards they can. If you want to see a real paranoid lender, look at Chase and their total shutdowns for credit seeking. AMEX and many other lenders likely find all of us with 10+ cards to be very risky and worth keeping their eyes on. With how popular their charge cards are, we would have heard a lot more elsewhere if people were having problems with them all of the time. Its unfortunate that this happened to SJ but considering that BoA took the extreme action of a total shutdown, it doesn't surprise me that other lenders are feeling antsy too. The bottom line is that six figures of personal debt is a huge red flag and algorithms don't care about circumstances or history.
Perhaps not history (though I am pretty sure Chase takes my history into account with some of their behavior towards me) but they absolutely take circumstances into account.
Billing address combined with Zillow Estimate - mortgage = decent chunk of net worth even without what amounts to income and sometimes asset disclosure via 4506-T or whatever.
Why would any lender truly worry about 100k in revolving debt if home equity is worth 1.2 million on a 300k mortgage for example? That's 700k on a cash out refi to pay off debt, or a big honking chunk of equity that a court can easily be convinced to tack a lien onto if the borrower flakes.
That's just one super easy example, but the algorithms are far more sophisticated than simply just seeing "oh look 100k! EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!" when it comes to their tradelines.
I was actually talking about personal circumstances, not financial ones. Basically the how and the why there is so much debt instead of whether it can be recovered.
@Anonymous wrote:
@Revelate wrote:That's just one super easy example, but the algorithms are far more sophisticated than simply just seeing "oh look 100k! EXTERMINATE EXTERMINATE!" when it comes to their tradelines.
I was actually talking about personal circumstances, not financial ones. Basically the how and the why there is so much debt instead of whether it can be recovered.
Oh my bad dude! Mea culpa, thank you for clarifying.
Agreed, it's all data: dog ate my homework or whatever, doesn't matter.
The song remains the same. It is their money.
@Remedios wrote:Rev, maybe you can explain how $3000 means "Hold the vault, he's about to rob us blind" but $1700 is perfectly acceptable
If SJ was trying for $30,000.00 I can see where they would be "Bye Felicia" but that $1300 is the most pathetic attempt at risk mitigation.
It's their imaginary money, they can do whatever they want with it, it's just business, but I'm really curious about this sophisticated algorithm that screams at $3K, but is fine with $1700.
As if they are going to put a lien on his kitchen table to recover the difference
It's similar to gambling: you have a certain amount of money you're willing to wager.
In this case to use that analogy Amex was willing to extend 1700 for a month but not 3000. Not really any different than the credit extension in anything, Chase initially being willing to give me a $1K tradeline for example back in the day even with my income and a years worth of banking relationship with them and money in said checking account at that time that could've cut dozens of checks for that full limit.
Again it's not personal and the decision probably wasn't human made: some calculation was made right or wrong, the consumer in this case got annoyed and cut Amex loose on this card. Entirely possible that was yet another reason they did it: even the dirtbag lender I worked at had a non-trivial analytics department and had some very sophisticated decisioning algorithms, and Amex et. al absolutely dwarf that company in terms of resources and capabilities.
Really if you think a customer might be a problem, encourage them to be someone else's problem. Rather elegant if that's what this was.
@wasCB14 wrote:
@Revelate wrote:
@Remedios wrote:Rev, maybe you can explain how $3000 means "Hold the vault, he's about to rob us blind" but $1700 is perfectly acceptable
If SJ was trying for $30,000.00 I can see where they would be "Bye Felicia" but that $1300 is the most pathetic attempt at risk mitigation.
It's their imaginary money, they can do whatever they want with it, it's just business, but I'm really curious about this sophisticated algorithm that screams at $3K, but is fine with $1700.
As if they are going to put a lien on his kitchen table to recover the differenceIt's similar to gambling: you have a certain amount of money you're willing to wager.
In this case to use that analogy Amex was willing to extend 1700 for a month but not 3000. Not really any different than the credit extension in anything, Chase initially being willing to give me a $1K tradeline for example back in the day even with my income and a years worth of banking relationship with them and money in said checking account at that time.
Again it's not personal and the decision probably wasn't human made: some calculation was made right or wrong, the consumer in this case got annoyed and cut Amex loose on this card. Entirely possible that was yet another reason they did it... but even the dirtbag lender I worked at had a non-trivial analytics department and had some very sophisticated decisioning algorithms, and Amex et. al absolutely dwarf that company in terms of resources and capabilities.
Really if you think a customer might be a problem, encourage them to be someone else's problem. Rather elegant if that's what this was.
Maybe it's intended as a bit of a private warning? If a charge card loses NPSL, I don't think other lenders are informed. A CLD would be more visible to other lenders, even though most of OP's Amex CL is non-reporting.
SJ, it looks like you have $95k in revolving limits from Amex...$34k personal and $61k business. Do those cards have some of the larger balances?
That's an interesting thought but I somewhat doubt that factored into it... or if it did, I take the cynical view:
Amex is competing with those other lenders, if you determine a customer is suddenly a risky bet, do what you can to not alert anyone else so they might take a loss 