AMERICAN EXPRESS Financial Review Article in SMART MONEY MAGAZINE

[Anonymous]

---

rifleman wrote:
"Yeah! lets F/R this guy!" Then they log onto Fico forums and have a good laugh when they see all these people getting pissed off.

---

  That's great!

I do agree with you though, they must have some sort of matrix or formula that triggers the F/R... But some of those CEO's... I don't know, they might get bored every now and then...

[Anonymous]

I don't think FR thing is that big of a deal as long as you have an extra CC with you. Otherwise you'd be fcuked. :-x Sure they denied my CLI request, that probably means they don't think I'm ready for it or something. It's fine. I'm not gonna take it personal. Also, I take back what I said about their CSRs; they're even nicer than the T-Mobile CSR's... and that's hard to beat!

[Anonymous]

---

rifleman wrote:
right, I'm sure there's a formula at work here, but I'm also sure they have disgression to F/R whomever they want whenever they want. I tend to lean more to a formula being the reason--I don't think AMEX Execs sit around randomly picking papers out of a hat saying "Yeah! lets F/R this guy!" Then they log onto Fico forums and have a good laugh
when they see all these people getting pissed off.

I do believe a formula is more of the case--and if I ever get F/Red, I will probably comply, but I will also ask them why, and if they don't tell me I will ask to speak to as many higher-ups as possible until I find out what triggered it. I'm sure it has something to do with credit scoring--whether its FICO, VANTAGE, PLUS or whatever scoring model they use...

---

Their typical response for doing F/R's  to cardholders is that they want to make sure that your spending ability is "in par" with your income. Whatever! I still strongly believe that all of this BS can be avoided if they had proper customer service skills and verified this info BEFORE granting a consumer credit or an increase in credit. Now, I'm sure there are times where something fishy may be going on with a members card, but don't just freeze it. Contact them, tell them you need some additional info, THEN, if they do NOT comply, freeze the accounts. But this "out of the blue" crap is nonsense!!!

[Anonymous]

flygirl wrote:

Their typical response for doing F/R's  to cardholders is that they want to make sure that your spending ability is "in par" with your income. Whatever! I still strongly believe that all of this BS can be avoided if they had proper customer service skills and verified this info BEFORE granting a consumer credit or an increase in credit. Now, I'm sure there are times where something fishy may be going on with a members card, but don't just freeze it. Contact them, tell them you need some additional info, THEN, if they do NOT comply, freeze the accounts. But this "out of the blue" crap is nonsense!!!

Definitely rubs me the wrong way.

I still think the process is random, with samplings coming from  lists of card holders and metrics that need to be met. For instance 40 from long term card holders with 2 or more accounts, 40 from new card holders with only 1 account, 40 from card holders that have not used their account for more than 120 days, etc...

With evidence that others have gone through exactly the same motions with Amex, and have NOT been FR'd I feel like it has to be random sampling, and / or spot auditing.

My $0.02

Rob