Abusing cash back - anyone been shut down?

[dragoncar]

My name is dragoncar and I have a problem.

I signed up for a lot of credit cards over the years, many of them Chase.  After I get the bonus, when the annual fee rolls around, I "product change" to Chase Freedom for the bonus categories. 

My wife and I now have 5 Freedom cards.

Last quarter, I bought $7500 in Visa Gift Cards at Safeway.  I earned $375 in cashback (not including the activation fees, many of which were negative due to abusing the Safeway rewards program) which I can redeem for $562 in flights thanks to the CSR.

This quarter, the category includes Walgreens, and I just picked up my first gift card.  Another $7500 possible this quarter.

Help me.

Seriously, though, I saw this older article saying that Chase terms say they will shut you down for abuse (https://millionmilesecrets.com/2014/09/07/how-to-keep-your-chase-credit-cards-from-being-shut-down/)

Haven't been able to find any data points regarding actual shut downs, though.  If I continually spend exactly $1500 on each card, per quarter, only in rewards categories, will I get shut down?  Will it help to make a few other small purchases on these cards?

Some of these are my oldest tradelines, should I leave those alone to maintain a high FICO?

side note: I consider the biggest problem holding so much value in cards that could be lost or stolen.  not sure how much I should discount on the risk that I somehow lose the value

Also, I don't completely MS these cards.  Meaning I don't go and buy cashiers checks or try to pay off my balance with a serve account or anything super sneaky.  So far, I pay off the cards and use them for household expenses although I did get lucky and was able to overpay some medical bills to get a refund check, and reimbursable business expenses.  At this point, however, I'm maxing out the amount of stuff I can prepay.

[CoffeeAndDonuts]

I've been running two freedom cards (one me, one my wife) for at least 3 years and only doing the 5x categories. We Max out about 2/3rds of the time. Never an issue.

Edited to add... I think chase ink 5x is the one you need to worry about abusing. $50k per year at 5x on office supplies was the draw. And people had more than one. Freedom just doesn't scale enough. I'm on the 3x freedom unlimited at the moment. Hitting it very hard. And worried a bit.

As to gift card retention, I inventory each one with all security info into a spreadsheet with 3 layers of security associat e to it, including automatic secondly copies protected by the same. That protects against fire. I also am careful about where they live and try to turn them pretty quickly. Estimated taxes is one outlet.

Funny story... I traveled for a month and got paranoid before leaving so I hid them extra well... And couldn't find them for nearly 6 mos! Thank goodness for my digital reference. By the time I found them, they were all liquidated.

Scariest moment... Buying over $100k in amex GC in 4 weeks. That's a whole different story. Somewhere I've got a picture of them arrayed out, $2000 per card. Glad that worked. Can't believe I did it. Not sure I would again.

[dragoncar]

Thanks for the info, makes me feel a little better about it.

Most of my outlets are digital, too.  Do the same with spreadsheet.

I'd say about half the time my GC purchase is initially denied and Chase sends me a fraud text.  I tell the cashier to hold on, reply to the text, and then the transaction goes through.  But then they send me another fraud alert.  One minute after I told them it's real. 

[marty998]

Thanks for the info, makes me feel a little better about it.

Most of my outlets are digital, too.  Do the same with spreadsheet.

I'd say about half the time my GC purchase is initially denied and Chase sends me a fraud text.  I tell the cashier to hold on, reply to the text, and then the transaction goes through.  But then they send me another fraud alert.  One minute after I told them it's real.

Artificial un-intelligence sends you the text. It hasn't quite learned to incorporate prior experience yet...