Paul’s credit card arbitrage blog

So I just wanted to talk about a friend of mine who was notified that he was under an amex financial review last week.

Basically at the gas pump his card wasn’t approved and later turns out they shut it down until he provides Amex access to his TAX RETURNS from the IRS!!

Who are they kidding to ask for such personal information. I advised him on what to do and this is what many people on fatwallet finance do when they get an American express financial review call or letter saying that his account is frozen.

When you call them and put your credit card # into the phone prompt for identification you get sent right to the financial review department, YOU DON’T WANT THAT! What you want to do is at the prompt just keep pressing 0 till you get a regular operator, then you tell them you want to cancel the card,which they will do promptly. They cannot see that your account is frozen and is under financial review.

The reasons you don’t want to speak to the Amex Financial Review Department

1. They are Rude Pricks
2. They will talk down to you and try to make you give them access to your private IRS info by having you sign a form and send it in to them
3. If you close your account through them, on your credit report it will say that “the account has been closed by the granter.” That looks really bad on your account and doesn’t reflect well on your credit score….

So hopefully nobody here has to go through what he did, and by the way his balance transfer is still fine he doesnt have to pay it all off even though he closed the card, and he still keeps his special apr % interest rate

SUCK IT AMEX financial review !

PS : if you want to check your credit report for FREE , the Freecreditreport.com link on the left is still valid so you can still get your credit report from Experian just cancel after 30 days to avoid any fees

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So as I am writing this, I have in my hands 2 checks for 14k each!!!! Those morons sent me the check twice by accident. No it is not the same check either, its 2 unique checks. Now my lazy butt has to go to the post office and mail it back tomorrow because my account now says I owe them MUCHO DINERO $$$

Anyways about my Amex Blue credit card… I like the card. Yes I even took one that has a 4.99% interest rate on it because I found an investment that pays off a bit more than that and it is worthwhile for me. If you are curious as to the nature of the investment, lets just say it has to do with the “carry trade”. The interest rate is for the Life of the Balance, so if you have a solid investment that pays over 5% then you are good to go with this card for as long as you want. I predict that interest rates may be cut just once more but I doubt it would impact this Balance transfer offer.

Also theres a few new 12 month 0% Balance Transfer cards that you may like for your upcoming APP O Rama.
You can find a list in the Balance Transfers section over at Credit-Land.com
There are some 0% balance transfer Discover cards, Citi Cards, and Amex blue and IN:NYC Card (6 months)

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Well I just got off the phone with AMEX after a slight interrogation with one of their customer service reps. I simply wanted to know the status of a 14,000$ balance transfer that i sent over to my Amex Gold Card  from Chase. They were saying how that is an unusually high credit balance and wanted to know why I paid so much money even though my bill was only a few hundred dollars. I explained to them that I thought I was going to be making a large purchase and wanted to prepay it ahead of time. The problem with such a larger credit balance with Amex is that due to their security process with fake checks and whatnot ,it may take up to 30 days!!!! to receive a check for my full credit balance. It’s ok though because they said that it was already sent to me and I will get it shortly.

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One late payment will put a big dent in your credit report. It shows creditors that you are not a careful individual, too lazy to pay your bills on time or just a deadbeat! In return they will drop your score by at least a few dozen points. Make sure you set up an auto pay system on the online site of your credit card issuer. Every issuer has an online site where you can pay bills, with the exception of CitiBank credit card site all of them will allow you to auto pay, or schedule your bank account to automatically be debited for either the minimum amount due or the full balance.  This way you will never fail to make a payment and your rates will not be jacked up from the 0% apr you have now to a crazy 20% or so if you miss a payment by a few days or hours.

Be careful guys~

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There are a few options out there for you guys. Most people reading my credit card blog that do APP o RAMAs have jobs and therefore they are able to pay the monthy minimum charges using their salaries. This option allows them to safely place the money in a bank CD ( certificate of deposit). Right now bank CDs are paying a lot more than savings accounts pay. For example www.CountrywideBank.com pays 5.65% on a 1 year CD. This is your best bet to make the highest profit using credit card arbitrage.

If you want to go with a savings account because you are unable to pay the monthly minimum credit card bills you will need to go with a reputable bank. We all saw what happened to Everbank last mont, so maybe earning an extra .005% on your money may not be worth it if you go with a smaller bank as a result. Both AMtrustdirect.com and Umbrellabank.com are paying the highest rates on savings accounts.. around 5.35% each. You can go with Emigrant direct Eloan or ING if you want a very safe place to put the money, however the return on investment will only be 4.75%.

It is really up to you guys to decide where to put the money. If you feel like you can trust online banks with less brand recognition than Emigrant, Eloan, or ING make sure each account will have under $100,000 in it, this way they are FDIC insured.

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Hello guys, well it looks like I received most of the cards that I have been approved for during my APP O RAMA. here is a list of the cards I got so far. NOT bad for a college student, huh? My student credit card arbitrage is officially in full swing and Im so happy my credit card blog actually helped me organize myself and my ideas neatly so I can follow through with it. I have already requested checks from the issuers that allow it and I requested others in forms of bank transfers and the Chase cards I had to transfer the balance to my Amex gold card.
amex 25000
bank of america amex 475
bank of america visa 19500
Bank of American world points 15000
chase visa card 8000
citi diamond 9900
citi drivers 9900
citi professional 8990
citi professional 5900
disney chase card 10000
gm card hsbc 6000
juniper bank national park 3200
RBS mastercard 8000
$ amt
Total CL $129,865.00

My credit score didn’t take a big hit either!! It will recover after about 6 months of prompt monthly payments.
You can get your Credit score for free here at FreeCreditReport.com just dont forget to cancel before the 30 days are up so you dont get charged.
Get your FREE credit score and more!

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Hey guys sorry about the lack of updates during the week. I’m slowly getting lots of cards in the mail. In the past few days I received about 2 or so cards per day. Each time I get an envelope I bend it to see if theres a plastic card inside and when there is I get very excited like it’s Christmas and i want to open the envelope to see how much my gift was for(credit limit). So far Citi bank has been great to me and I got over 40k in 0% balance transfer money just from them!

I will post up all my new limits and cards in the next few days.

take care,

Paul

PS:You can get your credit score for free here at FreeCreditReport.com just dont forget to cancel before the 30 days are up so you dont get charged.

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guys, I decided to take this post down to discourage people from doing some of the stuff mentioned here that I did years ago. I received many comments from people about this blog post and many were not too positive. Instead I’m just going to focus on credit card arbitrage and my app o rama.

Paul

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A few people asked me how I have an Amex blue card with a $50,000 credit limit. It is very simple actually I found out from another person that did it and I have personally helped 3 of my college age buddies do this successfully. Amex doesn’t need any sort of a income verification process for any credit line increase of 25k and under. You can either call them during business hours (don’t speak to Apu in Bangladesh because he can’t do it for you!) or do it online anytime at http://www.americanexpress.com/cards/loc.shtml

I will guarantee that if you put in a 6 digit income(which they dont verify for requests under 25k) they will auto approve you to a 25k credit limit. Now if you are still wondering how I got the 50k limit on my card, it was just 1 step longer. I had an American Express Blue rewards card, and a Blue cash card. I called in to close the rewards card,but told them I’d rather just consolidate the limits first of both cards (25k each at the time) and then just close the card. They were happy to do it for me, and didn’t require any verification at all.

Are there any benefits to this besides telling the girl at the bar you are trying to pick up that this card has a 50k credit limit,while your bank account only has $23.49 in it? Yes..Part of your credit score is your utilization rate on a card. If your credit limit is 5k and you owe $2,500 then your utilization rate is 50% and that looks pretty bad on your credit score till you pay it off. If you have a 50k limit and have a $2,500 balance, then a 5% utilization rate would look very favorably on your credit score.

PS: As I posted a few blog posts earlier, you can Get your FREE credit score and more at www.Freecreditreport.com

Also MANY MANY people here on Fatwallet Finance forum did this as well with no problems. Link to post

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Hi everyone sorry for the lack of updates over the weekend, I have been extremely busy working on school projects, I have some great news for everyone, I’m pretty certain that I now have over 100k in new credit limits on my newly applied cards!

During the application process which I completed a week ago, I applied to nearly 20 cards and fortunately none were rejected,however I received many more messages about being deferred than an instant approval. Dont worry though, most people I know that received the deferred status on their applications were all approved a few days later. It is very easy to check, you can call the credit card company within a few days and ask about the status of an application and they will be able to tell you whether or not you have been approved as well as your new credit limit. In addition to saying whether you are approved or not and your new limit, most issuers will even let you request a credit limit increase without you even having the card in hand!!!

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