The last week of November saw groups of shutdowns from three major banks: Discover, Wells Fargo, and Chase. If you were affected, sorry – that sucks. But even if you weren’t, we can learn from what happened. Let’s go bank by bank:
Discover
Summary: Repeated negative balances pushed the risk team over the edge.
Explanation: One of the tricks of the trade in high volume manufactured spend is to prepay your credit lines, creating a negative balance on your account in order to be able to spend more than your credit line. Some banks don’t care when you do this, but Discover isn’t one of those banks.
Lesson: Be cautious about overpaying credit lines. Discover isn’t the only bank that doesn’t like it.
Wells Fargo
Summary: Non-standard payment methods spooked the risk team.
Explanation: Sometimes paying a credit account directly via ACH isn’t the best way to pay; as a /r/OldSchoolCool inspired example, CheckFreePay at Walmart Money Centers used to be a great way to pay your Visa and Mastercard bills using Visa and Mastercard gift cards. In the case of recent shutdowns, a payment method that a regular customer wouldn’t normally use was advantageous, at least until Wells Fargo decided it wasn’t.
Lesson: Consider the source of payments to your credit accounts, often banks don’t like abnormal payment methods, and side note: that’s especially true with anonymous payment methods.
Chase
Summary: Prior chargebacks related to fitness club associations finally caught up to bag holders.
Explanation: There was a private manufactured spend group a few years ago that imploded, leaving hundreds of people with outstanding money that wouldn’t be paid back (no, this isn’t Synapse). Some people initiated chargebacks on that money, occasionally well into five figures or more, and Chase finally decided that those chargebacks made account holders personae non gratae.
Lesson: If you ever need to use chargebacks to bail yourself out, make sure the value of the chargebacks exceeds the value of your relationship with the bank.
Good luck out there, and happy Wednesday friends!
Another potential shutdown affecting all churners: Failed identity verification.
(Thanks to Vince for the unfortunately real screenshot)