Introduction
A reader had all his Chase accounts shut down on Friday. He wasn’t sure what happened so I asked him questions to figure out what happened:
- Ink abuse? NO
- Bill pays or any other anonymous payments? NO
- What were your total balances closed on latest CR? ~$20K (this is really minor; if he had said $120K, that could have been the reason.
- Did you cycle? NO, but I charged $60K CL on FU but paid off before close. BINGO!
I think the rampup in spend on the FU was what got him. Reminds me of when I ramped up on my Chase cards. Odd that they still got him even though he paid if off. Usually, we assume paying off gets us off the radar since we’ve shown the bank that we can pay off the spend. The counterpoint to this is that he was able to ramp up similarly on his Amazon card and had no adverse action. So it seems Chase didn’t like the rampup in spend on their UR cards.
Followup
The reader did call Chase this week and asked what happened. They told him they didn’t like “all the credit I had available on my credit report.” This is a bit mind-blogging because high amount of unused credit = low credit utilization = a good thing. I think what happened was the rampup in spend on the UR card put eyes on his account. They then looked at his CR and saw all of his available credit and deemed him a possible flight risk and decided to shut him down.
Lessons Learned
Don’t ramp up that high on any credit card, particularly a Chase card. The FU card wasn’t even a new card; it was a sock-drawer card that ramped up too quickly. Looking back, he should have spread out that $60K spend over 3-6 cards (include other banks too.) I know some of you will say, “I could have told you that,” but even a shutdowns expert like myself would have thought spending up to the CL and paying it off would have been fine. Maybe we all should consider lowering our overall credit lines too?!?
How much CL across all cards did s/he have?
Is then Chase FU or Chase FU unlimited. Just want to know why he wants to ramp up at $1 = 1UR.
Any circumstances of someone doing similar on a different non Chase card and Chase still shutting them down? Find it odd that if someone uses their card as intended (as a credit line) and still pays it off that it becomes a problem. Wouldn’t a bank want you to have a high balance so they can try to stack high interest rates?
Really interested in the balance transfer angle. With this type of situation it seems counterintuitive to take a balance transfer offer.
Multiple payments in single month? if not, what mode of payment was use to pay-off this huge balance? Was it new Bank account ACH? cash?
No I think one big fat $60K payment
I’m curious to know what his stated income was vs overall CL with chase. If his income is 75k vs 200k, I wonder if that’ll make a difference… And 60k CL on CFU? Impressive! What about the other chase cards?
Can you confirm if your reader also signed up for a new Chase card recently, particular a non-5/24 card like the Hyatt, BA, IHG, etc?. There has been a recent pattern where Chase takes a “second look” at your CR after you apply for one of those cards, see all your recent apps from the past year, then marks you as a credit risk and shut you down. If s/he didn’t apply for a new Chase card recently, Chase must’ve did a HP to check their CR after the big ramp up in spending, otherwise how would they know about all the “credit” s/he had available?
He had NOT signed up for any new Chase cards.