Originally Posted by
CMHFlyerOH
Though the fact that Ikar was able to reopen the cards makes me wonder if what triggered the alert on his account was different than the person spending $160k who was not even allowed to talk to CS reps.
Yeah, it's a good point. Then again, how often have you heard of an account being shut down before the first statement even closed, for spending below the credit limit? And it wasn't even a very high credit limit to begin with. Also, as noted, I called fraud before making the spend, to let them know I'd be making a series of 4-figure transactions at drug stores, and the transactions went through. The credit limit was hardly a stretch on our credit profile, and in fact much lower than most of our cards if not all of them.
I've put considerable amounts on brand new cards very quickly to meet spending requirements, including charges 4x this much on a citi AA card on the first day I received it.
So, while I would agree that my circumstance is different from someone putting 160k on the card very quickly, I also think my temporary shut down suggests a new level of review somewhere along the line -- whether a flag has been raised for just these 5x cards or something else, it's tough to say. I think that point is also confirmed by the fact that I was able to get the account re-opened, which, based on the conversation I had, was pretty uncommon. I will say it was quite an uphill battle and I really had to fight for it and answer an awful lot of arguments made back at me about how supposedly they have very sophisticated analyses for shutting accounts down. Having the notes in the record about calling to do the transactions helped.
I guess the bottom line for me is that something wacky might have been going on that has absolutely no applicability to anyone else reading this thread, and this is a small sample size problem. As I said, I would not even have thought about posting until I read that others had been shut down on this card. (To the contrary, I sort of thought this card was a bit of a diamond in the rough given the hilton 6x going away and I was sort of hoping this thread would remain buried.) But, my data point is there for what it's worth and while I am only speculating, given how unusual it is to actually shut down someone's account for under the limit spend without calling them and without it being initiated from a concern about fraudulent purchases, I don't think it's a stretch to think something is going on at citi with these cards.