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.
I had my Chase account shut down in 2014. I would recommend keeping separation between household members (not adding cardholders) and waiting to reapply/applying under a business.
I racked up 84 million UR points in 2014 and my account was terminated in early 2015. May seem like a lot of points, but I’m a full-time reseller that leveraged the UR portal for every purchase of GCs and then went through the portal again to purchase each item (typical portal payout was 10pts/$1 for the retailers I was using – so 20pts/$1 after buying the gcs then item).
Anyway, Chase closed my checking, business checking and 3 credit cards. They did, however, leave all my wife’s accounts open where she was the primary cardholder, even though I was listed as a cardholder.
Additionally, I just applied for the Business SW card in March 2016, and I was approved. Perhaps I got around it by using my business EIN even though I still had to enter my soc#? Or perhaps the two-year gap between shutdown and application helped?
Anyway, just some data points that may help!
Hahahaha 84M points?!? Holy crap! I thought my 1M points in Aug 2014 through UR portal from reselling was huge. Just goes to show – when you think you’re top dog, there’s always someone one out that takes it to a whole new level. Thanks for the data point; really appreciate it.
Sorry, I forgot a period in there! 8.4 Million.
Jon
Haha still impressive though.
Based on the chart I think it was the sudden change in spending. All of a sudden jump usually raises red flags and a manual review. I have a family member who works for citibank compliance and basically anything “out of the ordinary is flagged.” I am sure the anonymous payments, and 5X spending didnt help either on the manual review.
Thanks for taking one for the team. Most of the Chase shutdown stories that I see involve CL cycling and lots of 5X, so this isn’t shocking, but I feel for you. Have you tried calling them yet? I don’t think that they’re likely to reinstate your cards, but you might be able to find our about your checking account and your wife’s cards.
I think I’ll let sleeping dogs lie on this one and chalk it up to lesson learned.
I’m surprised in these shutdown threads,nobody considers their annual income listed with the bank as being a factor. Someone with $100k annual income spending $200k in 3 months is going to look a lot more suspicious than someone making $300k.
Income wasn’t a factor in my case; not sure about others.
Personal income isn’t necessarily a factor for a business card. My business cycles through a lot more money than I take out of it as income.
Where you buying GC or merch on ebay?
eh.. lets just assume ink was all 5x
I meant once you got the ebay gc at 5x. Using those mostly for reselling products or discounted gift cards or a little of both?
a little of both.
I think churning the CL would be the cause of it (especially with nothing near it previously). Not something most businesses would do. What did you end up transferring the UR points to?
Im confused. So you got shut down cause you spent a lot on your card? Why would that cause a shut down if you pay all of it off?
Fraud suspicion….they don’t want to get stuck with a big bill at the end of it if someone ends up stop paying. I am sure they have a risk formula or something like that. Takes a lot of swipes to earn back 20k in outstanding debt.
This may apply to new account holders, but milesperday apparently opened most of his accounts a long time ago. Also, would things be different if we call Chase beforehand we will be making big purchases using the cards?
Ya know, there were stories on FT last year about people’s accounts getting shut down from maxing the Ink 5x category. I guess that’s what you did. Maybe you should go easy on yer wife’s Ink for the rest of the year.
That’s the plan
Darn. Lol. How bad is this going to affect your credit score, history and health?
I don’t know. Don’t really care since I can’t control that.
“Go big or go home” is a bad idea with most banks and Chase is one of them, as we see in this case. Thanks for warning everyone that slow and stead wins the race. A sudden unusual pattern with any UR earning card can get noticed and being noticed is not a good thing. It was your Ink spend that did you in.
Hardly any volume to speak of. Dunno why you think your volume was the culprit.
sorry i’m not as HH as you.
I think it was something else. We use our cards for business, I recycle CL all the time. It’s not heard of to pay off a card 3x a month for me. The anonymous payments are the clincher I think.
Possibly but then my wife would have gotten axe too if it was purely anonymous payments. It’s probably the combination of everything.
They will get to her sooner or later.
Over 200k UR and 100k BA in Q1 as well plus CF. Not shutdown so far. However, I didn’t use:
1. Chase checking account
2. anonymous payments
3. CL cycling
Interesting. Over how many Inks though?
2 & 3 are problematic. Normal customers don’t do 2 & 3,
I don’t see how you would be shut down if you had spread it out more evenly. You were asking to be shut down when you spend 10x the previous months.
Yes, but like I said, I didn’t realize I went 10X
Sorry to hear that, Chase closures hurt all of us. Have you started thinking about how you’ll proceed and with which cards going forward? You can take this as a sign that you were meant to use straight cashback cards since you don’t travel a ton.
Hahaha IT IS A SIGN KEN! I was only earning UR as a fallback option. I am ALL IN on the cashback now.
Good deal. What card will you be using going forward, Citi 2%?
No, that 5% card I alluded to earlier.
That sucked! I would guess the recycling CL as a red flag.
wow, I cycle my CL occasionally and never even occurred me that it could be frowned upon or a red flag.
Yeah not sure if it was the cycling or just the ‘perk abuse’ or rampup. Hard to tell.
Sorry to hear Vinh. That sucks.
So I am a bit confused…. What could you move your UR to if the Credit cards are cancelled. Did you move them to an Airline program or do they only give you cash? I mean, you already earned the points so to my thinking, they are yours and they ought to let you use them.
I am sorry to read of this, Vinh. It’s stuff like this that is making me a bit more paranoid in this game all the time. I sweated bullets with my FR with Amex and was glad to squeak through that but have yet to have any cards flat canceled. Bad stuff, this!
I moved them all to Hyatt. I have enough United already.
Well at least you can stay a few months in a hyatt place somewhere if you needed to with all those points!
Sorry to hear of the shutdown. That sucks.
My guess would be cycling your Ink credit limit combined with questionable purchases.
Yeah who know if it was the cycling or just the raw spend.
I don’t understand why the need of spending about $20k in 3 months on BA card? The biggest sign up bonus that I know so far is only spend $10k and you’ll get 100k Avios
Go Google the BA 100K offer.
Also there is a annual companion ticket if you spend $30k. It is usable both on award and cash tickets.
I am guessing you bought a lot of eBay GC. Timed well with when it allows unlimited GC
Let’s just say I didn’t think the play would last, so that’s why I went overboard.
With this strategy, you are going to have all your accounts closed. Would the short term benefit outweigh the long term?
I felt the deal wouldn’t last once word got out, that’s why I went a bit overzealous.
Have you shared the deal here? I hope you are not talking about what I have in mind now.
No I have not and will not share the deal (because it was told to me and I didn’t find it myself.)
I also racked up $20k spend since Jan but my spending is very minimal with my other Chase cards (CSP, Ink, Freedom). My Chase accounts are all safe (so far) so my guess would be they flagged your March spending. I’d definitely freak out if this happened to me since I’m all in on UR points. Tough break, Vinh!
Clarification: $20k on my BA card in 3 months
Yeah this may rule out the BA rampup to 20K in 3 months, so it’s either Ink abuse or the total March spend. Thanks for sharing.
That would make sense since they would be making money on the BA swipes but losing money on the 5x ink swipes.