A few weeks ago, my wife was sadly hit with an Amex Financial Review. 

But like the story with the Rabbi who came to the doctor complaining that our foot hurts, when my wife got hit with a financial review, it was basically like me getting hit :). So let’s discuss how it went and what can be learnt. 

What triggered the financial review?

What I believe triggered the financial review was that my wife had more than a $25k balance on one of her cards. This is known to be a trigger for a financial review. 

What did Amex want?

When I logged into my wife’s accounts, I got a message pop up saying that all her accounts were restricted and that she should call the Amex Financial Review department immediately to restore her accounts. 

Once she called, she was told to fill out an IRS 4506-T form (which gives Amex access to our tax return). 

We did that immediately and uploaded it, hoping that her accounts would be opened ASAP.

Not so fast

Two weeks later, she called back the Amex Financial Review department for an update, but was told that the form was rejected. So we had to send it in again. That’s when I remembered reading online that the prefilled 4506-T form that Amex sends you is often cut off at the bottom, and therefore gets rejected. 

It’s much better to go to the IRS website and download the form there. 

That’s what we did. We copied over the same information that Amex puts on their prefilled form.

Another two weeks later

Two weeks later, my wife called Amex again, and the rep told her that this time, Amex thankfully accepted the 4506-T form. The rep reviewed our tax return while she was on the phone and reopened her accounts immediately. 

What Amex needs to improve

Even though my wife ended up passing the financial review without any changes being made to her account, it was still a frustrating experience. 

Having credit cards frozen from one minute to the next is always frustrating. Plus, many of our auto pays were set up with her Amex cards and now they were all bouncing back, resulting in major headaches. I almost lost my internet service due to the payments bouncing back. 

If Amex wants to put someone under financial review for bigger transactions, they should still let the auto pay smaller transactions go through, so people shouldn’t have to start finding alternative payment methods for all their auto pay payments.

What I learned

Never wait for Amex to reach out to you. Keep calling them, since nothing moves unless you push it. The fact that we waited two weeks to call them made us have to wait another extra few days because they didn’t do anything until we called. And only after we called did they review the tax return, which they had already received seemingly a few days earlier. So calling puts pressure on having things move faster.

Also, don’t use the prefilled IRS 4506-T form. Rather, download your own form and just copy the info over (as explained above).