{"id":10789,"date":"2024-12-04T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=10789"},"modified":"2024-12-03T23:29:30","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T06:29:30","slug":"credit-card-shutdowns-reports-from-the-trenches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/04\/credit-card-shutdowns-reports-from-the-trenches\/","title":{"rendered":"Credit Card Shutdowns: Lessons from the Trenches"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The last week of November saw groups of shutdowns from three major banks: Discover, Wells Fargo, and Chase. If you were affected, sorry &#8211; that sucks. But even if you weren&#8217;t, we can learn from what happened. Let&#8217;s go bank by bank:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Discover<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Summary<\/strong>: Repeated negative balances pushed the risk team over the edge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Explanation<\/strong>: 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&#8217;t care when you do this, but Discover isn&#8217;t one of those banks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lesson<\/strong>: Be cautious about overpaying credit lines. Discover isn&#8217;t the only bank that doesn&#8217;t like it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Wells Fargo<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Summary<\/strong>: Non-standard payment methods spooked the risk team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Explanation<\/strong>: Sometimes paying a credit account directly via ACH isn&#8217;t the best way to pay; as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/OldSchoolCool\/\">\/r\/OldSchoolCool<\/a> inspired example, <a href=\"https:\/\/freequentflyerbook.com\/blog\/2013\/8\/21\/walmart-billpay-the-next-frontier\">CheckFreePay at Walmart Money Centers<\/a> 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&#8217;t normally use was advantageous, at least until Wells Fargo decided it wasn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lesson<\/strong>: Consider the source of payments to your credit accounts, often banks don&#8217;t like abnormal payment methods, and side note: that&#8217;s especially true with anonymous payment methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chase<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Summary<\/strong>: Prior chargebacks related to fitness club associations finally caught up to bag holders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Explanation<\/strong>: There was a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/churning\/comments\/11sonz1\/comment\/jcgzm2j\/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button\">private manufactured spend group a few years ago that imploded<\/a>, leaving hundreds of people with outstanding money that wouldn&#8217;t be paid back (no, this isn&#8217;t <a href=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/19\/fintechs-and-fdic-insurance\/\">Synapse<\/a>). 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lesson<\/strong>: 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good luck out there, and happy Wednesday friends!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"638\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/chase-shutdown-638x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-10791\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/chase-shutdown-638x1024.jpg 638w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/chase-shutdown-187x300.jpg 187w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/chase-shutdown-768x1232.jpg 768w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/chase-shutdown.jpg 798w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Another potential shutdown affecting all churners: Failed identity verification.<br \/>(Thanks to Vince for the unfortunately real screenshot)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last week of November saw groups of shutdowns from three major banks: Discover, Wells Fargo, and Chase. If you were affected, sorry &#8211; that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whomp-whomp","category-wisdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10789"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10799,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10789\/revisions\/10799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}