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Just want to try and warn anyone in heavy with Synchrony...starting to see more chatter again, appears synchrony has a new supply of blue envelopes.
Can you explain more about what that is? How heavy do you have to be in to get a blue enevelope?
@Anonymous wrote:Can you explain more about what that is? How heavy do you have to be in to get a blue enevelope?
From what I see in the "What the heck is going on with Synchrony?" thread (linked earlier in this thread), my impression is that one major factor (aside from how much you owe) is how many cards you have with Synchrony. I've seen some people report having up to 20 (!!!) cards issued by Synchrony, which seems to indicate to me that they've played the "shopping-cart trick" a little too well. If you have a lot of Synchrony cards and you haven't used at least some of them in a while and/or you're carrying too-heavy balances on them, I'd say you're going to get some blue envelopes.
@joe8185
Thanks for the info. I just combed through the thread this morning. It sounds like people who have far too many cards with the Synch are getting hit. I think this is their way of also doing fraud checking to make sure accounts are legit. They know they have a large space in the retail card market so I would think 3-5 cards backed by them wouldn't be out of the normal. But folks seems to have like 7+, 10+ or even up toe 20 cards and doing what you said with the shopping cart trick and probably a lot of CLIs as well. I bet if they see a name in their system attached to more accounts than what would be deemed as normal, they are going to flag it.
I have two, Amazon Prime and Walmart and have just 5K exposure. I want maybe car credit or the the Marvel next but dont want to app right now. I wont be looking for any other card from them really because dont have time for worrying about a blue envelope. Worse case I can use my discover IT or my BCE for items if needed. I guess with any lender they can drop the hammer if they dont like whats in your profile or how you use thier product(seek CLI's often and dont use it).
I had a care credit from them years ago (When it was still GE Retail Bank) they auto closed it on me without even telling me. Only used it a few times for dental visits. Now I just have an Amazon Prime Store Card and the PPE MC with about 10K between accounts ( this is recent CLI not reported yet on CR) so I think I will be good. they actually sent me stuff for the walmart card but I ignored it. I only like to get what I need and will use.
I have the idea that Synchrony may be considering a wide range of factors and tailoring them to the individual accountholder when determining whether to close cards. Frequency of use, amounts of payment per month, lates, utilization, overall number of cards held with them, and so on, as well as reviews of the current credit reports. I wonder if the people who've been getting blue envelopes will find that there's a hard pull on their report(s) from Synchrony reviewing them?
@Anonymous wrote:
It's good to be aware that people with just one or two Synchrony cards have been hit with the blue envelope too, so it's not just number of cards or applications close together. I recall one person in a 2016 thread who mentioned they had their Walmart card for 10 or 12 years, aleays PIF, and received a blue envelope.
Best thing to do is to keep as low on the radar screen as possible if you have their cards. That's all any of us can do, since Synchrony's actions have been all over the map.
Actually, your post just now gave me another thought. You said that the person in question who'd had their Walmart card blue-enveloped had been paying in full every time for all the time they had the card, and I wonder if that might not in fact have been the problem, or part of the problem. I've read some authorities state that it may not always be a good idea to pay off your balance in full every single time, because one thing that at least some issuers like is for the cardholder to carry a modest balance so that they (the issuer) can earn interest. If that person were paying off the balance in full every month for 10-12 years, I wonder if the card issuer were realizing the profit from interest that they were expecting to get.