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I convinced my wife to apply for the nice Amex Delta Platinum Business card offer valid through 6/30. She rarely gets credit cards and was instantly approved.
We logged into her Amex account a few hours later for bill pay and noticed her personal Hilton card was canceled, while Delta Platinum personal card open in good standing. Hilton card she rarely uses, it may have been a year or more since it was used, not our usual practice though things slip through the cracks. Delta card she regularly uses.
We chatted with Amex and after going in circles “Yes, I can confirm your account is closed,” we pulled out from him that the Hilton had been closed and the credit moved to open the new Delta Business card. Any further info we would have to call, which we wanted to save for weekday business hours.
Moving credit in part or whole is a common tactic for getting card approvals, though I have never had it done without my consent or even notice.
We don’t care about the card, might one day want to collect the bonus again, so if the closure won’t do much harm to her credit report, we may just let it sit and not fight to reinstate.
Readers, has this happened to you at Amex or another bank? What should we do?
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[…] Approval Details: Instantly approved with $10,000 limit. However, in a strange twist, they took $10,000 of credit I had on a different American Express card without notifying me first. I mean, I barely use the card that they took the $10,000 from, and both cards still have five digit limits, but it was the first time this happened to me. (Although apparently similar things have happened to other folks as well! […]
I’m surprised that you and a few comments said, “I hadn’t used the Amex card in over a year.”
I use my Amex cards every other month or so thank to Amex Offers. At the very least, I use them all on Small Business Saturday, but with amazing offers like the Smart & Final, Sam’s Club and Home Depot offers recently, I’m making more than enough charges to keep my accounts alive.
@Janice – my wife’s cards are a different matter than mine, she is not enthusiastic about the hobby so at most I asked her to carry two cards. I am not good at maximizing sync offers, either. When I do, I use multiple authorized user cards for my other Amex accounts than Hilton.
The exact same thing happened to my wife last year. They closed her AMEX Hilton card when she opened a Delta Gold Personal card. We didn’t bother to reinstate it since Hilton points aren’t worth anything any more.
I had citi move credit without telling me. I had a Hilton Reserve card and a NAF Hilton card and I applied for a second Hilton Reserve. They dropped the credit lines on both of them to 2k or so to approve my new one at like 18. It struck me as odd, but I shrugged my shoulders.
That happened to me with B of A, too. The account they closed was our very oldest credit card, which hadn’t been used in a couple of years. I think that anyone applying for new cards with a bank should keep the current accounts active and in good standing, not just open and dormant.
@rapidtravelchai
wonder which account amex would close if she had multiple open.. oldest? least recently used? arbitrarily?
Since that is a personal card, and Amex is doing one bonus per lifetime, I don’t think you can apply again to get the bonus.
@Mike – I think in most cases you can get the bonus once more if you had before the rule, I recently did another Surpass upgrade and got the bonus.
how do you do a surpass upgrade please?
BofA did this to me too. 🙁
This happened to me – the reason given was because I hadn’t used my Hilton card in over a year, so it was considered inactive.
I was able to get it reinstated, and now have a small monthly charge on it to make sure it stays active.
Quite interest and frightening specially if the card Amex closes out is the oldest in your credit history
I had AMEX move credit from an old Optima card I keep open but never used when I opened a SPG AMEX.
Was she at the 4 credit card limit?
@E – nope, just the 2 credit cards and no charge cards.
I applied for a Delta Amex a few weeks ago and they also moved around credit without notifying me. It still leaves me with a five digit credit line on each card, but still, very strange! I never had a CC company do that to me before without notice.