He never did BP, just occasional MOs...he thinks he was shut down because of the sharp increase in spending on those two SPG cards...but I personally think it was because of MOs...perhaps that put the eyes on his account, and then they could see the rest (Simon mall, GC.com and such)...neither great FICO nor high income nor long term relationship with Amx helped...

Well, whatever shut downs many here have suffered, it cannot be as bad as THIS ONE...

I commented today in a long post there that sadly does not take paragraph returns.

Was the clawback for those AUs with the same SSNs?

While I'd be pretty upset if this has happened to me, it's pretty much guaranteed that every person who had added the same offer to multiple cards via different accounts / browsers trick and maxed out the benefits knew they were trying to get around AMEX T&C and system implementation. AMEX has obviously stepped up the enforcement of their T&C over the past several weeks, but IMO all this outrage is not justified.

My plight has been this: If a CC company or any company makes up T&Cs, those are their rules. One could argue that if you break them then whatever you are doing can be voided. Maybe they let it go here or there, or maybe they miss it, or maybe they one day crack down. Sometimes for all things going forward, and sometimes, for everything pending and even going backwards too. How far is I guess up to them.

BUT… Are these T&Cs actual legal to even have in there?

And are they legal in YOUR state? –like, just because it says this or that in some agreement between you and the company, is that even allowed to be an agreed upon thing or a rule?

And will a judge or magistrate enforce them based on other criteria, evidence, intent from both sides if there is a disagreement regarding the use of such T&Cs?

Think about that one for a while.

The Staples Amex offer would appear on all business cards, as well as all personal cards through the /domorebusiness URL back in June, which was a URL Amex advertised in emails. You could have had 10 cards with them -- maybe 5 personal credit cards and 5 charge cards between personal and business variants, and added the offer on all of them, without any multi-tab trick if done in June. There was no need to make phony authorized users with the same SSN, as you can add the same individual as an AU to all 10 of your cards and they could add the offer there too. Amex did a terrible job if they really wanted to limit it to one per person. This would be like Office Depot clawing back all the people who got extra money off on MasterCard gift cards last week.

This is why cigarette ads aren't allowed on TV and they can't give away free cigarettes to college students anymore... But Amex can issue cards to 13-year-olds as authorized users.

Even if Amx legally is in the right, morally it is in the wrong...with that and with all the recent shutdowns one begins to wonder if Amx is worth keeping...that RAT that they created might do them some good in the short term but a lot of damage in the long term...