Go back to 2016 thread and the Citi shut down thread 2016. No definite answers but you can get the general culprits by reading thru what people reported. Plenty of it.

Bottom line, as AlohaDaveKennedy points out, the banks all play closer attention to their cards that effectively pay back in cash. if your preferred vehicles to MS are cash back cards, either you only do it very moderately (thus a waste of time/effort) or else you prepare for the eventual outcome. Banks dont like MS on their own inhouse cards that effectively pay back in cash.

Got the axe from Suntrust today. Personal and biz. Biz ate the MO's. Personal was left over from an account opening bonus last year. At least I made $500 in bonuses off them.

This is actually a "happy they cancelled card."

Ive used and abused this card many, many times in the past few years.

Got shutdown with a "who cares" card last month. Comenity Total Rewards shut me down for "too many inquiries." The beauty is, I got the card just for the 10,000 points and 2 free buffets. I was going to New Orleans and wanted em. Got card on Monday and $1k spend on Monday @ GC.com. Points showed up on Thursday, and Friday I got shut down. I didn't know it though until I got back and got letter. The buffets worked in New Orleans Harrah's on Sunday.

Eh, got what I wanted and they shut it down for me, easy. Cant wait to apply again in a few months.

Ha

You're talking checking? Savings? If you don't mind sharing, what was your MO volume and frequency?

Were you playing with ST Delta debits or CCs or just recycling paper there?:cool:

washing only. No CC.

Less than $50k a month in the biz. Personal was dormant.

Add me to the DCU shutdown list. I was hoping based on my patterns and volume I would fly under the radar but no luck.

RIP DCU. You were the best.

How much were you doing?

$10-$15k/month for over a year.

Thank you for providing the relevant bits.

Now can a moderator make it a rule that you can't post in the Shutdown thread without providing the following details:
Bank, Credit Card info.
Length of account before closure.
Volume of manufactured spending.
Etc...

did you open the account just last year?

I have a checking account with Ch$ae and obviously a few CC as well. I've been paying my rent ($1k) and car payment ($500) each month by purchasing VGC at WM and then getting MO. My landlord and lessor on the vehicle accept MO without issue.

Is this actually MS?

Is there any risk associated with doing this? Again, Ch$ae sees the direct deposit come in from my employer every two weeks, and the MO are actually paying for things. I'm worried because I love the CCs I have.

I don't consider what you are doing to be MS, although buying VGC could possibly raise red flags (Chase doesn't know the MO you buy is "paying for things"). But I think the volume you are doing is very low risk.

You should be fine as long as you never ever deposit MOs at your Chase checking account.

i have a citi im doing some MS on for the 5% cash back (but its capped at $300/year) category at drugstores, any DP's on if there is an amount of cashback that is causing the shutdowns?

That's only $6K in spending over the whole year. I can't imagine CB would shut you down for that. Also, the department store bonus is hard to MS, so you might not meet $1500 in the late fall.

If you're talking about Citi Dividend, the cap is just $6000 per year; there's no $1500 per quarter cap.

thanks for clarifying that. Disregard my $1500 comment above.

I hear some chatter on DCU in another forum. Most of the data point is for MO deposit for >10k/month for last year+.
Please share if other has different RIP criteria.

Shutdown by Citi. All cards gone.

1) MS
2) MS
3) MS
4) WMBP and Bank payments from 5 different banks


Will miss the ATT card and qatar redemption

Volume? Cycling credit?

just 8 k with prestige , and 5 k with att. WMBP upto 4 k on both cards. Problem might be multiple bank payments.

That's not much MS. It's probably the wmbp more than multiple checking accounts.

I think people are missing the point, we are seeing more and more lower Ms amounts and peoples accounts are being closed, the banks don't want MSer's and the data points are show that.

One thing MSers have in common is that we pay off balances every month. I wonder if carrying a small balance into the next month on your favorite CC's would distract the algos that look for MS.

Yeah the regular person doesn't charge up and PIF within a week the amounts that people here are MSing.

I don't think so. Banks are looking for profitable customers, meaning those who pay them large interests plus penalties on late fees and other misc fees. Most MSers who know what they're doing do NOT pay any of these fees and if anyone does, they probably have to re-evaluate their strategies whether they're doing it correctly.

I have several friends now recently shutdown by @m3x, ch@se and b@rcl@y for doing WMBP; they knew they were taking a huge risk but decided to do it "just once" but it led to regular payments and then the hammer dropped. :eek: doing regular WMBP is their common denominator, no doubt it's the culprit for all of them. Most, if not all of them, did NOT cycle their CL nor did they have checking accts with the two banks.

WMBP must be something that banks are now looking at, whose accounts they manually scrutinize and decide if they want to keep them or just let go; but that is purely conjecture on my part.

You're probably right to a point, but there are DPs here of multiple WMBPs and no shut downs. There has to be some kind of search criteria to inspect an account manually or else it would take too long to accomplish. Maybe one of the criteria is multiple payments (from a bank and/or WM) or maybe it's carrying a zero balance every month. It could also be cycling credit several times per month. Without some kind of a control, there's really no way to tell exactly what leads to a shut down.

Where they using both WMBP options? Did they BP with visa/MC and also the issuing bank options? I only use one option to be consistent.

@m3x can be WMBP? Since when it becomes working again?

b@rcl@y is very sensitive on high utilization of CL, even though it is paid in full within cycle and no cycling. Strange strategy to grand large CL but dont like people actually using it.

I didn't pry on their accounts, I just took whatever they were willing to share in our discussion. From what I gathered average age of their accounts was four years, all of them rarely carried a balance (if they did, mostly <$100 and paid right after their statement posted).

All of them also paid from from multiple bank accounts but admitted they "got carried away" with WMBP to avoid depositing too many MOs to their banks. These people did an average of $35K MS per month. One of them said she had lowered her volume to $20K doing "only" $5K a week but wasn't spared from the hammer.

I've read a few DPs here on FT with people doing MoneyGram B/P at WM for am3x CCs where they pay $4.99 fee (a lot higher than CFP fees) with 4 swipes at the register. I've read some have already made five payments and have tried for another and not denied at the register. Maybe, there's a different rule for MGBP?

I have no experience with these since I don't do any B/P in-store.

I was doing monthly WMBP for about 2 years to Chase, Citi, and Barclay. Used my DL ST skymiles debit so payments were $2-4k in a single payment. I didn't get shutdown, but I stopped using WMBP about 6 months ago b/c anxious that I would be. I don't MS and don't churn, but I do like my signup bonuses and have high point balances (like 500k UR).

At this point with so many shutdown DPs people still do WMBP? :confused:

I am not surprised at all why many continue to do WMBP inspite of the risks shared by many. Many have said pertaining to MS ~ everything is fine until the next minute, all your accounts get shutdown and you don't know what hit you!

We just have to learn how to roll with the punches and move on.

We all take risks the moment we MS at any appreciable scale, though they're largely calculated risks, i.e. when many DPs show X is a high-risk and likely factor that causes shutdowns across banks, most I'd assume would stop doing X. Some don't stop though. I guess I was just curious what's the thought process there for them, the thrill of high-risks, something else?

For me, the convenience of WMBP outweighs the risk. If I had a WM that did over $2K, I might think twice, but that's not the case. If and when I get shut down, I'll post my DP here for all to see, but I still won't be 100% certain it was WMBP that got it shut down.

WMBP is anonymous right? Banks probably see WMBP and think there's fraud involved and cut their ties.

Actually it is CheckFreePay, and it shows up so if the receiving bank would show the payment path. Not all receiving banks would show the payment path. AMEX for one, does not. There is no difference from when you push payment from your real bank to pay bills if your bank uses CheckFreePay system. As far as I know, BofA uses CheckFreePay, so as PNC and TD and many other banks for their Bill Pay service. You can see the interface of it, is identical on any bank that uses the service. My guess is, the set amount of WMBP could trip wire. Using a real debit card that has amount far exceeded the 2K limit probably would not cause anything.

Using too many payment accounts actually has greater risk. Some banks actually limit to only 3 Payment Accounts.

Speaking of multiple payment accounts, have there been issues using one payment account/statement period but not the same source pay from month to month?

I've generally tried to keep the same source/bank per credit card for at least a few months, but when ramping up MS (like the last couple of weeks during the OM/OD deals) it often involves extra steps & pushing the money around to get it to the same old source payment checking account. Likewise, when Serve & Redbird were alive & well I had made notes on my spreadsheet and tried to use the same Serve/Redbird account to billpay the same credit card, i.e. Redbird1 > ccX.

Prediction: With the next credit crisis, services like Redbird and Serve will rise again.