@core wrote:
What is the point of these FRs anyway?
- Amex may think the OP is in financial trouble since he maxed out the card. What good is looking at income from 9 long months ago? And not even asking for household expenses? A tax return even if it was based on yesterday's numbers doesn't say anything about how much trouble the person is in.
how would OP show household expenses and do you think Amex reps really have the time to sift through receipts like a CPA or accountant would? tax return would be based on prior year yes, but that goes into how most credit card companies decide--whether to approve or not, and if approve, how much..doesn't credit card companies deny if you don't have enough history showing you can handle credit, or credit with X amount of CL?
- Amex (in other people's situations) may be concerned about a bust out. Again, how does income from 9 months ago show that a bust-out is not being attempted _now_? It doesn't prove anything either way.
That is true, but again, like above..no one can predict the future, so past history is always used to try and gauge--they don't ask for ten years ago, or five..but within reasonable timeframe..like last year.
- Often mentioned in these FR threads is that maybe the person was MSing category rewards. How is looking at last year's tax returns, before the Amex account even existed, going to prove or disprove MSing? If they really wanted to get to the bottom of this possibility they'd ask for receipts or an itemized list of purchases or something. Not tax returns.
Why would they do this? Even in cases where people MS and we know they MS and clearly the company can connect the dots and decides to cut ties they don't right out and say, you're manufactoring spending. now you're just talking silly because companies always cover their behinds when it comes to why they're severing ties..always as vague as possible and not putting anything in writing or out verbally that can come back and bite them in the butt. So they won't be asking for itemized receipts even if they were daring enough to, the paperwork alone would drown them, not because of the one individual but i imagine this is a large pool given Amex's roughly 38,000,000 credit card holders.
Tax returns are much easier, and if you made 100k last year, they could probably easily pinpoint how much roughly you'd spend on rent/mortgage based on your county and if you're already spending over 100k in swipes--they'd want to know you have enough liquid assets to support that, otherwise, it doesn't matter if you doubled your income this year and is making 200,000 (which to be honest, short of a job change, how many employers would double your income? or if you worked for yourself, how much of that would you really keep and not put back into your business as an investment?) because even without calculating basic day to day expensures that you cannot escape (bills, food, tax) you've already spent last year's gross annual..
The guesses given for the reason for these FRs make NO sense. The FRs themselves make very little sense. Unless the only point of an FR is to punish someone a bit.
nope, i am sure Amex has better things to do then to sit around, having fun at someone's expense in the form of a "punishment". if you have the dough to back up the spending, don't you think Amex would want to keep that to keep the swipe fees (especially given that they're amongst the highest). theres a gamble between being burned by a cardholder and having a cardholder bled dry of high APR%. clearly most lenders are willing to take that gamble, Amex isn't, and is being more conservative but that's within their rights.
