whatever is being used :)

Avoid or not avoid spending more than CL??
 

My Barclay Arrival and my SO's were closed by Barclays after 8 months. I had just ramped up to 2x CL per month on each card. They stated "history of usage."

I mix in regular spend but the bulk $ amount of the purchases are obvious MS. I dunno if they care or not. I've had to call in a few times for fraud alerts for gift cards but each time it was simple and they thanked me several times for using the card and apologized for the inconvenience.

What did they do with the points when you got shut down?

pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered... ;)

oh wait :p

Hmmmmm, scary stuff. Sorry to hear that. Were you using an AU on your SO's account. If so, was your AU card the majority of the spending? Any Boost purchases?

Sorry to hear that.

Just wondering. Did you call them to try to reopen or to find out the real reason? Were any of your other accounts closed, and did they look at your credit report?

This caught my attention too, because I have very large Barclay point balances and have been concerned about closure.

Credipig may give a more informed response than mine, but reading their other posts, he/she said no luck getting the point balance. Also, if it is pertinent, he/she was almost exclusively using arrival to load Visabuxx card as I understand it. I don't understand that card much, but hopefully, for me, that is what caused the shut down rather than CL use or point redemption or point balance.

I am sitting with over $12K in Barclay point balances, primarily from using Boost, and do not want to get shut down. I was doing 2x to 3x CL, but am sticking to 1x for now and hopefully will not get hit. I guess I may need to do a bunch of reservations, redemptions, and then cancelations to get my points out instead of holding them for real trips, if they are going to cancel and forfeit our points whenever they want.

People need to keep in mind that 2x to 3x CL is a really relative number. If your CL is only $4K, doing 2x to 3x CL with a good salary is not bad. However if you have a CL of say $15K and you are doing 2x to 3x CL then that is a completely different story.

So I guess what I am saying is that you can't just assume that doing multiples on your CL is necessary bad if you have a low CL. However if you have a high CL than it is NOT a great idea to be spending a total of say $50K/month compared to someone who is doing the same multiple and is spending a total of $15K/month.

The card is transparent and has a blue square in the middle of it. I use it at CVS and Grocery Stores. That should be a good enough hint.

As far as purchases, I only do MS and its quite obvious if looked at. However, I do spread it to different stores, and I use different amounts each time. I add a Coke or something to the end.

Edit: I routinely make sure any points are used month to month. I dont hold a balance.

Deleted.

This.

All these multiples that get thrown around are meaningless. If your CL is $2,000, the chance of you getting shut down for doing 2X is highly unlikely, but if your CL was $50,000, I am sure some flags would be raised.

I try to redeem my Barclays balance whenever I get over 100k points just in case of shut down.

What people need to do is when they are talking about doing multiples of their CL they need to put context as to what their CL is so that people don't get confused. I do hate all these multiples that get thrown around with no context as to the amount that is being cycled.

I find this comment interesting. Would you care if you could no longer MS 10x your CL, thats giving up quite a lot of points. I believe you would.