Chase shuts down my wife’s accounts

Introduction

Well this sucks.  My wife had called me on Friday night saying her Sapphire Reserve card wasn’t working again.  It had issues a few weeks earlier, but when re-ran, it worked.  Thus, I chalked it up to another bad terminal or so.  However, I woke up on Saturday, logged in to her account and sure enough:

 

Was it Ink Spend again?

Immediately, I thought, “SHIT!  Did I overspend on Ink again?  Or maybe it was my overall spend (which was probably what led to my shutdown?)   So I graphed it out for you guys:

So let’s analyze this a bit and see if we can rule out some possibilities:

1. Ink abuse – I don’t think this is what caused it.  As you can see, I was spending only $4K a month on 5X, which while high, I wouldn’t say that’s Ink abuse.  Plus, the 5K of Ink 1X (thanks Cardcash) in August would have helped me since I wasn’t purely doing 5X on Ink.  So while this could have been a likely reason, I think the odds are low.
2. Total spend led to the shutdown – I don’t think that’s the case since if they were afraid of the rampup in August, they would have shut me down in September or so.  Note my Ink does have a 25K CL.  I don’t think the 9K spend in October (over 2 different cards) led to the shutdown either since it was in-line with August.  Once again, while this could have been the reason, the odds are low

I really don’t think spend was an issue in this case.

 

So what do I think it was?

I think what led to this were the 2 returned checks on my Hyatt card within a span of 4 months.  I had written about the first instance here and then the second one here.  I think their systems may be worried about my payments not clearing and deemed me as risky.  Or maybe it was the second call that put eyes on my account.  Or maybe the combination of all 3 reasons.  I won’t know until I get the letter in the mail in a few weeks.

I also hadn’t applied for any new cards for her since June so it wasn’t as if they saw a lot of HP’s on her CR.  Possibly they saw her AMEX FR (rather, the high spend on her AMEX cards.)  Actually I take that back since most of the spend was on her business cards (no personal cards closed with a high balance.)

Or maybe they finally got around to axing the entire household due to my axe back in March. 

 

Aftermath

The only bright side out of all this is that they did refund my $450 CSR fee and I had banked the $300 travel credit already; plus I was able to transfer out the 100K UR points.  I don’t recommend this method though since it’s clearly not scalable.  They also refunded the $95 on Ink as well as $75 Hyatt and only partial IHG.  I was also able to transfer out the Ink’s UR points.  Remember if they shut you down, you have 30 days to transfer out your points.  No word yet on the savings account and the mortgage though.  I have a feeling the savings account will be axed, but the mortgage will stay since that’s in a different division (this is from data points I’ve read.)

While this axe hurt, it wasn’t as painful as mine since that was the first one.  I still have access to other UR cards if I need. I’ll just now give my wife a new dining/grocery/gas card.  Now if they do something with the mortgage, then I’ll be pissed.

 

Lessons Learned

The key takeaway here is – DO NOT PUT EYES ON YOUR ACCOUNT.  Of course, also try not to have too many failed payments with Chase, especially in a short period of time.  You can see how that puts you as a ‘high risk customer.’  If you do get dinged a second time, just pay it and go about your ways and not try to fight it.  Do everything over SM; don’t call if possible.  Some people will want me to say “slow and steady,” but I’m not since in my opinion, I was doing that already.

#ShutDownsAllDayEveryDay