Introduction
Since last week’s post, 2 more readers were shut down by Barclays. It’s getting real up in here folks. This will be my last full post about Barclays shutdowns; I’ll just add future shutdowns as snippets in the Saturday roundup. The common denominator from the handful of data points I’ve seen so far has to do with anonymous payments to Barclays. So if you are doing that, I would suggest you stop. This will be the last time I’m crying wolf.
Reader #1
Spouse’s 2 Aviator Reds and an A+ shut down. Wasn’t putting too much spend on the card, but was doing MS. We think it was due to the CFP payments, which was his main payment source for the last few months. Never funded a bank on the cards. Aviator annual fee was due 3/31. Reader was scared to call for eyes on account; didn’t matter.
Reader #2
Pick your poison on this one. Heavy MS last year. Did bank funding. Didn’t ever CFP to the account, but used another anonymous payment method. Annual fee on Aviator Red was due and they luckily got the 10K AA bonus anyway. Interestingly, this reader’s household wasn’t axed. The reader had their own cards (which were axed) while spouse had their own card. Spouse’s A+ has been spared for now since it is newer, hasn’t had much MS on it, and I think most importantly, no anonymous payments.
Lessons Learned
It seems the catalyst for the axe is when the annual fee comes due. Doesn’t matter if you call or not. The lessons learned here are a) if you think you’ll get the axe because you’ve committed those sins like anonymous payments, it may we wise to preemptively close your card. If you don’t want to do that, if you are an AU on your spouse’s card and vice versa, it would behoove you to cancel the AU’s so that the entire household won’t get the axe (reader #2’s story.)
6 barclay cards (3x each on 2 SSNs in the household) got closed around a month back. I used to do fair amount of MS on these cards last year – especially the travelocity one.
Vinh, do “Anonymous Payments” in this context include paying with prepaid-card accounts? Those have a routing number like a checking account and I figured they do identify who is sending a payment to a credit card. Thanks
Piggybacking on this thought… What exactly are anonymous payments?
Dario, click on my link in the post. It’s mostly unverified payment sources. It seems the surest way to pay is via a linked checking account. Any other means may look ‘anonymous.’
Thanks, I read that post a few days ago but I guess I overlooked the anonymous part of it. If those two methods are what is anonymous then I guess I’m in the clear.
Thanks for keeping us posted!
Scott, I honestly don’t know. My guess is that it would look anonymous if it’s going through the Checkfree system. I would err on side of caution since one of the ppl who were shut down paid with Serve.