Originally Posted by
MileageGoblin
Oh puh-leeze. Glad you are so perfect. And for the record, it wasn't a closed account. I also bought a house in May and all the cash in multiple accounts was swept to one account. The amount (which I said was less than $100) was an auto-pay.
It is not a matter of the $ amount, it is a matter of sloppiness that has caused this unneeded grief from AMEX because AMEX system is very sensitive on returned payment - it would process it twice if the first time it did not go thru.
Did you read the post right above yours, from Clueless12? The returned payment caused him an FR but he came thru fine. In your case it may have caused a more in depth scrutiny on your financial situation, not just the AMEX accounts. For whatever reasons AMEX human credit analyst did not like what s/he saw and initiated the shut down process.
There were DPs in the past, that a cardholder in the range of several hundred Ks annual organic spend, have found all his cards closed because, guess what? A returned payment from autopay set up - that he has already PAID that amount long before AutoPay date, due to his departure for a long trip. He thought the account has been paid, so the AutoPay would not kick in, hence he has not had the enough amount (high 5 figures) in the payment account. That caused shut down when he was on the trip. Needless to say he was furious as it caused huge inconvenience to him.
I dont know if AMEX has since fixed the AutoPay issue. I do know if you have scheduled a payment manually, if the outstanding balance has fallen below the previously specified amount, AMEX would only take the lower amount instead. But that is not an AutoPay which in 99% of the case, just goes by the balance at Statement close. Often that has caught people by nasty surprise when the banks' (not just AMEX I can tell you that) still take full statement balance at autopay, regardless the outstanding balance has fallen below due to return or other payment.
This is NOT for your benefit as what has been done has been done. But a good information to those who read the thread, that there are little things you think is no big deal, like a less than $100 returned payment, could easily prevented, but not paying attention to this seemingly little thing, could cause unwanted trouble down the road, like what you are experiencing now.
Therefore for those who follow this thread, should learn this lesson, albeit at your expense, sorry about that.
It is stuff like this when we read, we learn. So we would not make the same mistake ourselves. YMMV.