Disclaimer – if you’re gonna be a troll and tell me I deserved it, feel free to stop reading and move on.
Introduction
I mean, this was inevitable right? After throwing down nearly 280K UR in Q1, the writing was on the wall. To be honest, I didn’t even realize I hit that much in Q1. I was trying to limit myself to less than $5K per month, but there were just too many good deals on 5X that I couldn’t pass up and so I kept charging and charging. Only today when I was trying to figure out my spend for the past 3 months did I realize how much I actually charged (more on that later).
How you know you’re shut down
When I logged on today and saw this on my Ink, BA, and 2 Freedoms:
5 Stages of Grief?
To be honest, when I first saw it, I just smirked and nodded my head. I wasn’t hurt. My heart didn’t sink. The reason for that was because last month, I had the scare already. I had logged on and all of my accounts were inaccessible. I thought I was shut down, but it was just a web site glitch. THAT was more painful than today. Today, I just nodded my head like I knew it was coming. Like waking up one day and your old dog dies on you, except you’re not as sad. My Ink lived a good life.
Wife’s card in tact still
So while my personal and business cards were shut down, my checking account seems to still be alive for now. However, I have a bad feeling about that and will move all my autopayments over to another bank. My wife’s Ink is still fine and we were both AUs for each other. I worry about her account now though. I think if hers goes, I’ll be more sad.
What about my UR
I could still access my UR account and was able to transfer them all out. I believe Chase gives you 30 days before that gets axed, so at least they’re nice in that regard. As for my pending UR on my Ink and Freedoms…heck who knows. I may CFPB them to see if I get those UR cashed out. Stay tuned.
So what caused the shutdown?
So let’s rule out my 2 Freedoms since I only spent $1500 per quarter on them (of course on the 5X category.) My BA card I got in December. My Ink is about 1.5 years old. I didn’t max out my Ink the first year. Here’s a chart of my spend on the last 4 statements:
I think the chart speaks for itself. There are 3 things that could have did me in:
- The Ink uptick in spend
- The “new” BA card spend of almost 20K in 3 months
- The combined spend in March of 36K may have been too much (note my Ink CL is 15K)
We won’t know for sure which reason it is, so take your guess (it’ll be as good as anyone else’s.)
And yes, while I had some anonymous payments in March, I don’t think that’s what did me in since I made the same payments to my wife’s Ink. But like I said, she could be next.
Lessons Learned
Slow and steady wins the race.
This just happened to me. What did you end up doing with your remaining UR? Safe to transfer to wife’s account?
No I sent it to my Hyatt account
I know I’m treading on eggshells here but,
I have a 30k CL with Ink+. Last month I spent $4k at OSS and about $2k at 1x retailers. I don’t use it for BP, don’t make anonymous payments, etc. I basically do small MS and pay the bill in full before the statement cuts – I.E. behavior satisfactory enough for Chase to look the other way re the piles of GCs.
Anyway, my latest statement cuts 1/3/17 and I have my eyes on an award ticket (as you know MS is a dangerous game). I calcuate I need to have $15k at OSS for this month to get enough UR to book the ticket. So far I’ve gotten up to $7.5k (which would seem in line with spending patterns, it’s also Xmas time). I just need to spend another $7.5k. This would not even get my CL to 50%, so I’m well under that, I just think the 3-4x normal amounts at OSS might raise some alarms. I don’t want to spread it out through next January, however, since the next statement would close in February and the ticket would be long gone.
Thoughts?
I would do it, but that’s advice from someone who’s been banned already, so prob not the best person to ask. You have to assess your own risk vs reward.
So I’m just getting into ms, and I spent 16k on my two ink cards, about 8k each, on the office Depot visa offer last month. I probably have about 3k each in other spending. Now office Depot has the same offer for mastercards. I’m wondering if I can duplicate my feat from the visa cards or is this too soon? Should I just wait and see what happens first and sit this one out? What say Vinh or anyone?
I would wait it out. 10K in OSS in a month is a bit excessive.
I’ve been preaching for a years slow and easy win’s the race. Those who had the mentality of hitting hard are now stuck with what?
I guess most of your ink purchases has been on CardCash and Gyft. Am I right?
I don’t want to disclose that on the site but there’s only so many 5X places right? So…
Ok what does CL cycling mean?
When you go over your credit limit and pay it off in the same month to give you more credit.
Thanks. That is the only thing I don’t do is go over my credit limit. I have done more than what you have on the other two and never shut down.
Has anyone ever been shut down where all payments are from a chase checking account in card holder’s name? That would be a good A B test to determine if its anonymous payments. I have a guess it’s anonymous payments is a huge flag. Money laundering is a whole lot more worrisome to a bank than 5x abuse or maxing credit limit. Remember bank models are such that a lot of people will float balances and pay huge interest rates so they don’t necessarily lose money on those occurrences in the aggregate. But money laundering consequences if they didn’t do due diligence are huge.
You’d need to have the same spend pattern, which would be hard.
what constitutes as an anonymous payment? I make money order payments to my chase card accounts at the branch, but I put my name on the chase payment slip. Does this count as an anonymous payment?
The jury’s still out on that. Some people have said they are still actively doing it and no repercussions. So you do what you feel comfortable.