yOyOYoo

Any MS done on the Sapphire card? Like 5 to 10K Chase gift cards a month? Or maybe $1K every month with AP? Any spend on VR cards? Large charges on your Ink card to the same office supply stores?

I feel like there is something missing to this story.

Happy

Impossible. CGC was $2600 limit per month and that ended in Sept.

On top of that, any of the activities you described do NOT violate any T&Cs other than the banks don't like it.

To the other poster, banks T&Cs are much broader than any airline/hotel loyalty program - the languages are structured to give the banks literally a carte blanche to do what they like when they decide to fire you as a customer AND no need to explain anything specific to you, hiding under the Bank Secrecy Act or the Patriot Act. Because of this power, banks can use (abuse) it to get rid of non-profitable customers when they see fit.

Please read the T&Cs of your bank account / CC / reward programs - they all say they can close account for ANY reason. No justification needed nor be explained to you.

There are enough data points to show that keeping a high balance in banks' own program is a fool's game.

Airline and hotel loyalty programs have much more specific conditions on what are considered violation of program rules. They would shut you down if you sell your miles / points / upgrade instruments. If you are first offender, you often are forgiven once you fess up. These loyalty programs also dont have government regulation compliance issues to deal with.

Totally different animals and your interpretation of my making an analogy is completely a misunderstanding on your part.

OP - if you have not done anything that violate the T&Cs of the account, by all means, take this to SCC - about the only way to get some justice.

augustus21

Good explanation by Happy. Using a business credit card for personal charges is a violation, though. I agree that we need more information to make a judgement.

klevin99

If you go the small claims route, you need to serve the right entity. First, identify the exact legal entity that issued your card. The full agreement (that no one reads) spells this out. Then you can start searching. Sometimes it's as easy as google. Other times, you can find an online record for the corporate entity in its state of incorporation.

In many cases, corporate legal structures can be complex, so please do not assume a local bank branch can be successfully served. You could of course, ask the branch manager who to serve for a credit card dispute. The manager might actually help. At worst, nada.

Unless you serve the proper entity, you will have wasted your SCC filing fee and service fee because your case will be thrown out of court.

Finally, be aware that your legal contract no doubt has an arbitration clause. Could that block SCC? Dunno. You might want to ask an attorney, although SCC costs are no doubt cheaper than even an hour of a decent attorney's time, so little risk in trying. Just don't hope for much.

The above is not legal advice because I can't give legal advice...

Happy

It is a vague area. So far no bank has ever enforced it if it is even truly a violation.

Using biz card for personal expenses does not offer the same protection the law affords to the personal cards. Banks actually encourage you to put personal spending on biz cards UNTIL the spending gets really large (and earn a lot of points) then the banks exercise the "violation" card...

Always keep that in mind, in the T&Cs area, you the customer is ALWAYS the Loser if the bank decides to close your account - because "for ANY REASON" is clearly written in the T&Cs.

I would not be so naive to think the banks would not have motive to fire a customer solely because the customer costs the banks money by earning too many points.

Happy

I would add, if a corporation has a physical location doing business in your jurisdiction, said location often by default becomes the "Agent" of the corporation so you can serve your notice there.

You do not need to directly serve the named defendant which is the entity you would sue. You do need to decide the Exact Name and Address for the corporation entity you are filing claim against. For example, Chase can be JP Morgan Chase or whatever, and the address of the bank division would probably different from the address of the card division.

As an example, Citi is Citibank, N.A. - the CC entity's address is in Sioux Falls versus the bank entity's address is in NYC.

And yes, a Citi local branch can be served for claims against Citibank - be it the card dept or the bank dept. Being served does NOT equal being sued. Dont get this confused. An "Agent" can accept summons. The local branch only acts as an "agent" to accept the Notice, then forward the Notice to the entity named as defendant on the Notice. I am giving you this information based on the facts and not random speculation.

I would assume Chase works the same way.

You can PM the posters who have filed claims against Chase to get their help on how to track down the needed info. You are definitely NOT the first one (nor the last one) end up in this situation.

Extensive googling can be very helpful, too. You would probably unearth info / threads in other websites that relate to your situation. This effort would probably be far more useful than locating an attorney.

moarmiles

Save for the 50k sapphire signup bonus and the 60k from Ink, the majority of the points came from regular spend from my Sapphire card. The most I've ever spent on GCs is $300 worth of Shell gas cards at Staples using my Ink Bold card and I never got into the whole visa/mc gift card thing. Come to think of it, I once went over the limit Chase gave me on my Ink Bold card with personal spend, but quickly paid it off.. maybe that was a factor? It just sucks having to speculate.

BTW, what do you guys mean by MS?

And from what I've been reading so far it seems like I'd most likely get cash for my points. Do you think it's possible to just get my points back so I can transfer to Hyatt or United?

Lastly, it'd probably be nice to start some sort of Wiki on who to serve based on state. Is it possible to start something like that here in FT?

pantanal

Not sure I understand your last point. On regular spend, the banks don't lose money by giving you points as they make more money on every transaction than they pay for the miles. If a customer cost them money by generating miles, then banks world not be in the miles business.

If you are saying that someone who just gets a sign up bonus and then does nothing, then this person costs the bank. However, this is just part of the customer acquisition that happens in pretty much any industry

nwflyboy

While I am not questioning the truth of any statements posted in this thread, there has got to be more to this story. I find it a real stretch that the OP is getting the full Chase smackdown only on the basis of the activities reported here and the modest balance of UR points.

Sure, 300K UR points is a nice little pile, but it is hardly unusual in and of itself. Virtually zero MS activity. Just a couple of premium cards, used pretty much as expected. The "personal spending on a business card" is a red herring. Methinks there has to be some other triggering factor.

I'd bet my lunch money that there are a *lot* of FT lurkers here that have more UR points sitting in their accounts, and who have engaged in substantially more (and more blatant) MS than the OP has copped to.

There's a piece of the puzzle we're not seeing, and I don't think it's just that Chase is looking to dump anyone who has simply accumulated 300K UR points.

cottonpatch

It doesn't seem plausible that Chase would simply close the accounts because the OP was carrying large balances.

Often1

There's always more to the story, but OP may not know it. SAR's are expensive to complete and file and people engaging in weird activity who generate SARs are easy customers to fire.

nwflyboy

Not for that reason only. That certainly *could* be a contributing factor, but there has to be something else in the mix.

These details make me wonder (bolding mine)…

"Inconsistent"? If that's the term they used, that seems odd - and doesn't really suggest the personal-versus-business angle. But as pointed out upthread, the front-line CSR isn't going to have any idea about the reasons behind the shutdown, so I'd ignore that.

5-10k per month might be enough to get their attention. How does that compare to your annual income? They are going to get twitchy if they see you spending a lot more than they think you should, based on your reported income - they worry that with a high spend habit, one day you might charge like crazy and run.

I have a lot of cards with some crazy high credit limits. But I would become uneasy if I was spending a large part of that limit every month. Once or twice, probably not going to spook them. But 10K every month might cause them to take a look at your income and ability to pay of your balances if you continued to spend like that and only made minimum payments for a while.

Another factor could be exactly what kind of spending you were doing. We have seen prior reports of Chase smack downs when the cardholder's business was, shall we say, unconventional (crowd-sourced and plowing through non-trivial spending). Chase saw that as an exotic business model and was uncomfortable. Was the 5-10k/month spending at ordinary, garden-variety sellers (and is your "business" something boring), or is there something in play that could look exotic and edgy to a conservative banker?

I think card issuers do not like it if they see that all (or nearly all) your spend is at places where you get mega bonus points. If you consistently do all your spending at, for example, office supply stores (with an Ink card), you spend a lot there, and don't have any/much non-bonus spending, I think you run the risk of getting their attention.

A few other questions…

1. Did you ever "overpay" your credit card bill? For example, your bill for the month was $1500 and you paid them $2500 (resulting in a negative balance temporarily), which then allows you to spend even more the following month?

2. Did you ever run up a large balance early in the billing cycle, pay down your balance during the month, before your statement came, then continue to spend more, and then pay off the end-of-month balance (making more than one payment a month)?

3. Have you used Bluebird or one of the other free bill-paying services to pay off your statements frequently?

I have heard that each of these practices may get their attention and cause them to become skittish. Once you give them a reason to scrutinize you, they may find other things that look worrisome. Combine those with some other factors, and you may start to look like a risky customer.

Just speculating here, and much of the above is simply what I have heard, not hard facts. But what you (the OP) have described by itself does not look like a pattern that would cause them to give you the bum's rush.

Lets do the numbers…you got 110K for the two card signups. You ended up with 300K. The rest of the (nearly) 200K points came from regular spend…over how long a period, on how many cards? I don't know if going over the limit may be a contributing factor, but could make them take a closer look.

"Manufactured Spending" - churning money through various instruments to generate points for things that you probably would not have spent money on. Not illegal (and maybe not even a formal violation of their T&Cs) but certainly frowned upon. They tolerate some of this, but if they see enough of it (or if they have some other reason to go after you), they'll move against you, to limit their losses and/or perhaps to make an occasional example of someone.

No. That's not gonna happen. IF you fight them and win, all you'll get from them is a check (a settlement; you will not get any meaningful explanation for why they fired you). There's not much chance that you will get points back, because they are not going to re-open your account. They are done with you (at least for a while).

Happy

You quoted OP's post and even bolded a sentence which, he said he PAID IN FULL each month on his Sapphire card for 2 years.

If you want to do analysis on the OP's info at least get the information right.

BTW, I agree with you OP would never get Chase to tell him the WHY on the account closure but if he fights, he at least stands a chance to get back his points which as we have seen, Chase in one case is willing to give Miles instead.

rambro

All these closures are spooking me. I'm going to start transferring out to Hyatt and United.

jordandawg05

not to get off topic, i currently use my ink in office supply and the other 5x bonus categories to maximize the earnings...i hardly charge anything else as i use spg. should i use more of the normal personal spending on ink to hide most of the 5x categories? what are others doing ? i only spend about 600 on phone bills, internet , cable, and office stores ( mainly gas cards)