AmEx fails to consider profitability and lifetime value - Credit Card

By: BWF

Here is the letter I sent to a reporter who had an article about American Express' bizarre credit decisions. In addition, I just received a letter that the cancellation could have a negative impact on my credit report. How can that be when I have always been an excellent customer for them? I would happily join in a class action lawsuit.

Sign me up.

Hi David,

Thank you for the article on American Express. My card was canceled today. I am baffled. I have been a member for 7 years, during which time, they started me at $500 credit line. They quickly moved me to $5,000 and then $10,000 where I have been for the past 7 years. I typically run about $5,000 to $10,000 per month on it paying it in full all the time. I never had a late payment or any issue with them. They were definitely my favorite card to work with.

In November of 08, they cut me to 5k with no warning saying that they check credit reports monthly. Then in December, they cut me to $500. Of course, both cuts were when I had paid the balance down, so in essence, they took operating capital from my small business. Loosing the $10,000 of operating room in a 60 day period hurt pretty bad. Then I lived with the frustration of a $500 line. I would have closed it myself, except that I have become dependent on the Hilton Honors points as a part of my business travel budget. I was having to really work it to get the $500 credit line to work with the $20k I needed to keep gold point status. I began paying it off every other day and then using it in smaller chunks. I had several conversations with the reps saying that $500 didn't get me through a weekend of travel or even allow me to book most air tickets.

Then yesterday, they canceled me completely. Again, I asked them why. Since I had checked my credit report in December when they did the first cuts, I had a comparison base.

When I checked it today, my outstanding overall debt had gone down by about $8k in the past 4 months. My credit score had increased 70 points. There were no marks against me except I accidentally went $2 over my credit limit on my smallest visa card this month and quickly got it back below the limit (I had paid it in full at the beginning of the monthly cycle), so I had a possible negative alert that I had gone $2 over a limit for a few days on a different card. That was the only thing I saw that might have triggered their models.

I have some inside insight as I used to build credit and marketing models for USAA and Bank of America. I truly think some JUNIOR analyst at Amex has built a very short sighted and limited scope credit model. The big question is, why is American Express management not seeing that it will run them into the ground very quickly? I found another article that said that their Q1 profit was down 56%. I had a perfect payment history running between 5k and 10k a month through their system at a 4.5% merchant fee per transaction. Did they really think I was at risk of missing a $15 a month minimum payment? That is $180 per year. I made an online or phone payment several times a week of whatever they would let me pay when they dropped me to $500 (trying to maintain my $20,000 per year gold point status means I had to pay off the $500 40 times in a year) .

It would have been virtually impossible for me to miss the $15 monthly minimum payment. And when they dropped me to $500, how big was their risk? Are they cutting risk, or destroying their profit base? I vote for the later. I am 41 and WAS a very loyal Amex customer with decades of high dollar spending left in me.