Equifax - Amex reporting weirdness - anybody understand this?

Question

I just got an alert that an account that has been inactive has reported a balance, It's my Amex ED that reported a balance of $1. The thing is that the account is active every month, I just pay it before the statement cuts. Another weird thing is that it shows my high balance as $21 when, in fact, my high balance was $1025. The latter is the same across all CRA's. What's the deal with Amex reporting?

Answer 1

Revelate wrote:
We've had reports previously (talking a couple years ago that I can recall) that Amex would reset the Highest Balance every so often but I haven't seen that on my reports yet which could be another issue.  I spot check my reports when I pull them for that after hearing it still as I don't quite accept that one TBH.Don't know about Amex doing that... but Discover certainly does. And not the kind of "X-years trailing High Balance" that you'd expect, either. For example: In May 2009, Discover reported $14,983 as both current balance and high balance.  (Which was then PIF, of course.) For the next three years, that $14,983 remained as the reported High Balance, as the statement balances during that time stayed in the $0 to $4k range. But in May 2012, the High Balance was reset to the then-current balance of $404 - ignoring all of the prior higher balances during that period, even the $882 that had reported the month before. Odd. It certainly adjusts upwards as you'd expect (the following month reported $1,153 and the High Balance followed) - the oddity seems limited to times the High Balance stays static for three years - that appears to cause a straight reset. Other random data points:Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Chase appear to never reset at all (all reporting the same High Balance they did 10+ years ago).  Actually, in the case of BoA, that same reported High Balance stayed the same from the MBNA MC it started as, through a BoA Visa, and now a BoA "Amex"; and for DW's Chase cards, the same reported High Balances survived the Providian/WaMu/Chase dance, and at least one PC since. I'm curious to see what Amex does - I'm likely to set a set a high balance during this year on the BCE that will be paid off and then not exceeded for several years - so I'll keep an eye on it.