American Express is Shutting Down Credit Card Accounts

amex shutdown

American Express is Shutting Down Credit Card Accounts

American Express has quickly become one of the most stringent credit card issuers. They have been clawing back bonuses, shutting down referrals, clawing back credits for a variety of reasons etc. Now, in the last few days, there’s also been a big Amex shutdown wave hitting many cardholders.

There’s already a big thread on reddit about it. It’s not clear yet what the exact reason is for these shutdowns. It could be more than one. Any type of abuse could be a possible reason, since we have seen them getting really strict about enforcing everything. A list of data points has been collected in this spreadsheet, but from a quick look, it doesn’t points to anything specific. Many people have lost huge amounts of Membership Rewards points as well.

Some possible reasons could be buying gift cards for spending requirements, Amex Offers or credits. Self referrals have been a big issue so far, so that could be a reason as well. Doing multiple pay-over-time offers, previous financial reviews and more have been floated as triggers for the shut downs. But again, we do not know for sure yet.

Guru’s Wrap-up

Seems like a lot of people have been affected by this round of Amex shut downs. I strongly suggest that you do everything by the book when it comes to American Express credit cards from now on, if you are not already. The exact reason is not known. But we know for sure that American Express is on the lookout for any violation of terms, or maybe anything that they might consider as gaming their system.

Let me know if you have been shut down and if so, if you have engaged in any type of behavior that you might think as the cause of it. Also let me know how this affects you going forward.

Here’s a quick recap of some of the bad Amex news I have covered this year:


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12 responses to “American Express is Shutting Down Credit Card Accounts”

  1. […] that happened around Veterans Day of 2019. However our own readers and smaller blogs such as Danny Deal Guru, Doctor of Credit, and Reddit have all been diligently reporting on the issue. This disparity in […]

  2. You don’t have to put up with their bullshit. There’s Chase, Discover, Citi and more. Amex has been the worst for years. To many rules and they do whatever they want. No wonder they are losing market share to others.

    1. They still offer plenty of cards with good bonuses and benefits.

  3. Seems to me giving goodies to responsible people hoping to make it up on Bad boys n 👧 s is a flawed business model. Has t o end. Similar to ai r line miles.

  4. I left Amex for greener pastures. It’s all my fault….lol.

  5. I was shut down and I didn’t do any of this stuff

    1. Anything else that might might be a possible cause?

      1. Don’t underestimate climate change.

  6. My previous comment was wholly incorrect. That spreadsheet includes people that were shut down and ones that weren’t (and it seems very few of them actually were). The summary data is thus just an overview of /r/churning subscribers. My apologies, please delete.

    1. Done. Thanks. I thought it was less DPs when I first checked.

  7. Thanks for that. Puts those two categories on top as most probable reasons.

    1. Quick correction: that should say “multiple cards except different flavors of Platinum,” NOT “multiple Platinums.”

      I chose those two categories because they’re individually the highest frequency ones. But there’s a few problems:
      – polling bias (it’s /r/churning, after all);
      – no control group (they didn’t allow posting of “no shutdown” DPs);
      – many other potential (trans)actions Amex may consider gaming are not included in the survey;
      – many things that are NOT gaming but are unprofitable for them may lower their threshold for what is unacceptable in terms of gaming.

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