In October 2013 I interviewed Pat, who shared her story of Chase shutting down her banking relationships based upon her transaction habits. In the past few days I have been hearing more about this happening at other institutions, and readers have mentioned that US Bank and Wells Fargo are now aggressively closing accounts that have a large number of Money Order deposits. Chase at the time was focused on closing accounts with large Cash deposits, if you are manufacturing spend I highly recommend you read that post again, and look at the comments section for more reader insights.
One thing a reader mentioned there that struck me as something that we should clearly never do is taint other accounts with the same institution. Reader Eric explained that when he was notified that they were closing him down he asked for the money in his account to be wired to his daughters account at the same bank – which they then shut down also. I think we should note that if you are flagged, even wrongly, for being suspicious transferring that money internally is going to flag any new account for closer observation at the very least.
This of it like this, when you are persona non grata your money is dirty to the bank, you need to take it out of the system and put it back into the system in a clean manner, I would certainly recommend to get a cashiers check rather than ACH even to an external bank if at all possible. Read the interview here if you haven’t already, I included her thoughts on why it happened, and some recommendations on what to do if it does happen to you.
For now it seems, watch cash deposits into Chase, and watch your MO deposits into WF and US Bank. And at the very least, if you get the notice, act faster than their deadlines, get your points out first – all your points. Even if they are only going after your checking account it is very likely that your credit cards will be next. Then follow the steps in the interview to sort out your accounts.
I have heard credible reports of shutdowns from US Bank, but the amounts were extremely large.
Given both anecdotal evidence and my own experience working in large financial institutions, I don’t think the banking and credit card departments are likely to be particularly connected at all. A credit card compliance team is not going to lose their job if some banking client is depositing MO’s
I would consider it more a case of if a banking client has been flagged as a risk and had their accounts shut down the cards are coming next. Even if they aren’t, it doesn’t really do any harm to pull your balances since we are at this stage only looking at Chase who have banking plus their own commodity of points.
If Chase shuts down your bank, it is a great time to start thinking about transferring out your URs – if your really can’t think of how to do that then perhaps you can risk leaving them there. I doubt you would lose them in the end, but they might put a freeze on them.
It isn’t bad to be proactive about these things to stay ahead of the game rather than wait for something to go wrong first and hope for the best.
US Bank closed my account 6 weeks ago for depositing MOs. Club Carlson still working.
I’m less worried about a Club Carlson- it’s third party so even if they closed less likely to clawback. Sorry to hear about the account though
aegt how much in MO’s were you depositing? Regarding Chase, I went to the branch last Thursday and closed the Kiss of Death i.e. my Chase checking account. Unfortunately perhaps, I deposited the cashier’s check into a new Wells Fargo account – Matt do you know amounts of MOs people were depositing to WF that got them shut down?
Will – I don’t know the numbers, perhaps aegt and others can help out?
Numbers?