There’s been a new cluster of customers getting shut down by American Express with all accounts getting closed out. It might be due to abusing the 99 authorized user bonuses or possibly just for huge volume of manufactured spending. Most of us common folk will be fine.
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AM just plays this game, as well as we all do.
It keep raising annual fees and raise the junk “benefits” or add more pages to the coupon books. Then it finds any way to deny you the “benefits”. Smart people always make money from AmEx. And AmEx always makes money from those dumb people.
The game goes on and on…. There has to be some end for AmEx to flatten its quarterly earnings. More people know how to play this game. And AmEx will run out of cards.
I’m surprised by how confident amex can be that they didn’t shut down the wrong customers
I have to believe that their programming and algorithms, combined with the vast data that they have in-house – must give them pretty reliable data from which to act. I’m sure it’s not entirely accurate to 100% of course, but I’ll bet it’s very close to target.
WTF cares how many AUs can you add. Its hard enough to meet the spend requirements of the SU bonus.
What else is stupid as I did legitimate AU spend from P2 and forgot to add the social, and they closed the account and didn’t give the bonus.
Watch the next wave be people that used that same 250k biz plat link that got plastered everywhere. (and I’m not talking about people that found a link organically)
There’s no difference it’s not actually a targeted link. Buncha prudes
Where’s the post mortems? I want to see how hard people went on this. Show me the Schwab accounts!
ask them to show you their hilton accounts instead
You mean the “one & only” hilton account across many other amex accounts? Lol. Also, some just have no clue and want to see the Schwab. most don’t even use Schwab for MR. Lol.
The question was asked and here’s the answer. Some individuals with Amex business cards were extended additional user (employee) cards. Up to 99 additional user cards per primary card. From 5k to 25k MR per additional user card. Because Amex requires Social Security numbers to activate these cards, these individuals simply used their own name and Social Security number for each of the 99 additional users per primary card. With ten Business Platinum cards, they were looking at nearly 1000 AU cards. I know of a few individuals who did hundreds of AU cards in exactly this manner in only three or four months to capture millions of points, which were immediately cashed out. Amex’s Rewards Abuse Team simply had to screen the AU Social Security numbers to learn who was messing around. And, there you have it.
open and shut case johnson.
brilliant, props to them. capitalism is a dog-eat-dog world
I actually think it’s more rat eat rat
rat eat hog
Hundreds? You get hundred one just one card. I did thousands each year. Amex absolutely did not screen for this, and im still fine.
Love the people that pitch guesses as fact! Have fun with your couple hundred dollar SUBs lol
To add 99 users, I believe you need 99 social security numbers and addresses from different people in order to confirm those credit cards and get any spend bonus offers, so what kind of abuse is it possible to achieve this?
Fk UUUUUUU Amex!!!!!! Gimme my 2000 AU back!!!!!
What a rookie number for 2000….try 5000 next time! Lol.
Turns out this whole “wave” or “cluster” or whatever you want to call 5 basement dwellers getting shut down was the result of a return fraud scheme where the points awarded weren’t all taken back on the refunds/returns. And some idiots went whole hog on it.
How does that even work? Live I’ve never seen a return or a credit where points weren’t deducted. Amex can’t be that dumb?
Make purchase using cobrand card that earns bonus points, refund purchase, 1x points are deducted with refund but not the bonus points. It’s a thing.
Return schemes are some of the most obvious behaviors that banks target, so it was not the greatest idea ever.
This is more common than you think actually I hold at least two cards (not the one being referenced here) where I know how to do this but I don’t because it is a step too far for me ethically. I stumbled across both on my own due to small legitimate refunds. It is possible they have since been fixed but I suspect not.
My return scheme is when I need to do a legitimate return from a place that will take any card, I use a debit card to take the return and keep the points.
I don’t see how the bank is any wiser.
Seems like doing other things like cashing out the points before doing a return back to the card seems really foolish and risky.
Yo, this is interesting. Any such place?
the original bank won’t know.