There aren’t too many absolute statements in the churning and MS world, because things are constantly changing. What’s ok today is not tomorrow, and that might be fine because there’s a whole new thing that wasn’t there yesterday.
But there’s still a handful, one of which probably stands above the others in ubiquity – don’t call the bank. It’s reiterated to every beginner over and over. Don’t call the bank. Don’t call the bank. Don’t. Call. The. Bank. We all know not to do it, but it’s not always necessarily clear to a newer person why we don’t call the bank.
While I know a lot of you have been around way longer than me, I have been doing this a somewhat above-average amount of 10 years. I only remember two things from /r/churning in those days.
The first was some person going scorched-earth at the audacity of a community of gamers that they were a member of trying to earn a CU bank bonus, saying that he knew the CEO and was going to rat out everyone trying to earn it.
The second was proof that this universe is one gigantic ironic simulation – the ultimate reddit moment where user /u/DontCallTheBank (you can’t make this up) called the bank over and over and “well ackchuyally’d” them until they let them open another AA card (although the end of that saga is more like don’t call the airline).
Pictured: the bulletproof logic our anti-hero gave the Citi Executive Office
It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with calling the bank – instead, it’s inherently wrong to have a real human looking at your account, especially when you’re asking why didn’t my exploit loophole work the way it said it would online?
Until very recently with the widespread adoption of LLMs, the rules and systems in place by every financial institution were really helpful for understanding what the limits were (and if they actually existed).
For example, if you were under 5/24, or 1/90, or 8/65, etc. etc, you could be fairly certain you would be approved for a new card, and you could be fairly certain you wouldn’t be if you weren’t. The system logic was only looking at that, and if you passed, you passed, regardless of what shenanigans you were already running at that bank.
On the flip side – as anyone that has ever applied for a credit union card knows, there often isn’t that automated review, and you may be subject to a FBI background check level interrogation just to open a 1.5% cashback card.
As AI continues to be implemented and allow banks to automate questions that are much less “how many cards have they opened in the last 24 months” and much more “is this customer unprofitable to keep around because of how they use our products”, the phrase might get a little less ubiquitous because FIs are already looking to weed out gamers.
But that doesn’t mean that you should continue to avoid getting eyes of any level of intelligence looking into your account.
A normal deposit account customer gets 2 payroll direct deposits per month, an ACH out for one credit card, maybe one for rent or mortgage, and a handful of P2P payments.
A churner account with 20 ACHs in and out and a six figure deposit from something called “Patience Always Pays” looks like just another Tuesday for us, but it certainly doesn’t for them.
If you were a random CSR and you got a call about why a promo bonus didn’t post when it has only been hours since the promo was announced and you saw customer activity like that, what would you think?
At best, that you were using a personal banking product for business purposes, and at worst a conversation that is significantly worse than the CU interrogation you were in to get the card in the first place.
It’s best practice to avoid human intervention as much as possible, and it’s not only the context of getting shutdown.
I had a CU that let me deposit in an advantageous way (don’t ask, it’s long since dead, I promise), so I was running that loop with me and P2. We have the same last name – guess who ended up with the other’s deposit more than once? We’re lucky it worked out for us, but that’s what happens when you are hitting a target that is old-school enough to manually credit deposits.
That level of human involvement goes all the way up the food chain, by the way. There are plenty of best-in-class reward redemptions at huge banks that are being dealt with in a very manual, human way. That type of processing means the gamification angle just isn’t there.
One final thought on this, though. There are so many reasons to not call the bank. But there are a couple of reasons to call them. Generally, banks are happy when you call them to complete an action that makes them happy. What would qualify as that? Providing documentation to expand your relationship, or perhaps giving them some money.
In those cases, you’re probably talking to someone who can’t see your full profile – just enough to get the action dealt with. And in perhaps the only case where human intervention is better than machine logic – that is your chance to do a little social engineering and chat up the CSR. Sometimes, the only way to go from “$5,000 per day” to “$5,000 per transaction” is chatting with Tyree about his kids.
རྒྱབ༌སྐྱོར༌གྱི༌སྐད༌འབོད!