{"id":17151,"date":"2010-10-08T20:00:07","date_gmt":"2010-10-09T00:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/?p=17151"},"modified":"2010-10-08T20:00:07","modified_gmt":"2010-10-09T00:00:07","slug":"consumerist-doesnt-know-what-an-amex-financial-review-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/consumerist-doesnt-know-what-an-amex-financial-review-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumerist Doesn&#039;t Know What An Amex Financial Review Is"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of years ago, I applied for some Amex cards, largely in order to cash in on a big Delta promotion.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amex approved the new cards, and I activated them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A week later, they suspended all my accounts and I received a strange phone call from someone overseas asking for my tax information.\u00a0\u00a0 This is what is known as a &#8220;Financial Review&#8221;.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I described the entire process in this post, <a href=\"\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/my-experience-with-amexs-financial-review\/\">My Experience With Amex\u2019s Financial Review.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Consumerist Doesn&#8217;t Get It<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Consumerist, which is normally pretty savvy about such things, <a href=\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/2010\/10\/why-does-american-express-need-a-copy-of-my-wifes-tax-return.html\">is utterly confused when a reader enquirers about this process.<\/a> According to the post tittled: &#8220;Why Does American Express Need A Copy Of My Wife&#8217;s Tax Return?&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Evan writes that he recently got married, and the newlyweds make more  money than they did at this time last year. American Express suspects  something, and has suspended their credit card, demanding a copy of his  wife&#8217;s tax return from last year. What&#8217;s going on?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Based on the reader&#8217;s description, which is identical to my financial review experience, they have no clue.\u00a0\u00a0 All they can do is ask:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Some key information is missing here: is he carrying a balance on the  card, or paying it off every month? Is he using the card more, spending  more money along with his increased income?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>None Of These Things Matter<\/strong><em><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The problem is not his balance, or his payment history.\u00a0\u00a0 It probably isn&#8217;t even his increased spending.\u00a0\u00a0 Simply put, the problem is Amex.\u00a0\u00a0 While my experience was that the financial review was triggered by opening up new accounts, I learned that these reviews are often triggered at random.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Even if it is not random, there is no point in speculating what caused this.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Assuming the reader is not some kind of fraudster or international arms dealer or something, this is just a major annoyance akin to being selected by the TSA for secondary screening.<\/p>\n<p>As I wrote, the problem is really with how sloppy Amex is at executing this review.\u00a0\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know about you, but when I receive a barely audible phone call from a foreign speaker asking for me to fax him a release to see my tax returns, my first instinct is to hang up.\u00a0\u00a0 When my credit cards stopped working, I realized this was for real.\u00a0\u00a0 Just to be safe, I called Amex myself to insure this was not some kind of clever fraud.\u00a0\u00a0 It is not hard to imagine how a scammer could call up and report your card stolen to invalidate your card, and then call up and pretend to be from Amex the next day.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, we don&#8217;t need scammers to interfere with your accounts when we have Amex doing it at random themselves!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Offensive On Many Levels<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Some people are offended by the idea that Amex wants to see your tax returns.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Others are offended that they are abruptly canceling your card for a few weeks.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I can only imagine the difficulties people have if they were to actually rely on Amex as their sole credit card when traveling.\u00a0\u00a0 Personally, I stopped using Amex when traveling outside of the United States after discovering that they were charging a foreign transaction fee of 2.7%. \u00a0 Think of it as a negative rewards card,\u00a0<a href=\"\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/2-cash-back-from-scwab-and-27-cash-from-amex\/\"> but that is another story.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, I chose to comply with their process, but I know that many have quit Amex in disgust over this.\u00a0\u00a0 The crazy thing is that I hvae never heard of any other bank subjecting it&#8217;s customers to this process. \u00a0 In an industry where hundreds of dollars are paid for each new customer acquired, it is amazing that this customer loosing practice still exists.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kudos to The Consumerist for shinning a light on this, but they really should do a little homework first.<\/p>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\" style=\"position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px; overflow: hidden;\">\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/my-experience-with-amexs-financial-review\/<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A couple of years ago, I applied for some Amex cards, largely in order to cash in on a big Delta promotion.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Amex approved the new cards, and I activated them.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A week later, they suspended all my accounts and I received a strange phone call from someone overseas asking for my tax information.\u00a0\u00a0 This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.10 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Consumerist Doesn&#039;t Know What An Amex Financial Review Is<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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