How Chrome Autofill Made A Mess Of My Recent Application
Last week I explained why I recently had my wife sign up for a new credit card without a welcome offer bonus. The refer a friend bonus plus the ongoing spending structure of the card had it make sense for us to grab it, even if the Amex pop-up told us we wouldn’t be getting the welcome bonus. Well, it turns out that the application was a bit more of a mess than I thought it was. I think it was because Google Chrome’s autofill feature did me dirty.
The Application Process
The application process seemed to go off without a hitch. I grabbed my Amex referral link and filled out the application with my wife for the new card. Usually Amex is an instant approval, especially when you have a preexisting relationship with them and there is no welcome offer. But her application went pending, which I found strange. I figured I must have miscounted her credit cards or something, because of the limits Amex has for them, but she only had 3. So that wasn’t the problem. We decided to just wait it out and see what happened. We got an approval email a few days later and the referral points posted the next day. All was good at the Ostermann house, or so we thought.
Getting The Card In The Mail Sends Waves Of Confusion & Panic
The card came in the mail a week later and when I opened the package I was hit with a wave of confusion, and then panic. The card had my name on it, not my wife’s name.
My initial thought was that I was added as an authorized user but I couldn’t remember us doing that. The plan was to hold off on that and hope for a bonus offer to add one at some point.
My next thought was that we messed up somewhere and the application was filled out for me. That would be a major issue since Amex does not take kindly to self referrals. That is when I noticed the card had my wife’s member since date and not mine.
So next I went back to the card shipped email from Amex and it had my wife’s name on it and not mine. The plot thickens.
The last move we had was to activate the card and see which account it showed up on. Funny enough, it was added to my wife’s American Express log in. I figured Amex must have mixed up the names from the referral and sent us a card with the wrong name on it.
Reaching Out To Amex Via Chat To Get It All Figured Out
We fired up Amex chat and explained the situation. The rep looked over the account and said when we filled out the application we put my name on the card. Doh! What I think happened is we used Chrome autofill for the address etc. and that changed the name above. I have noticed this happening in the past but always caught it. It appears we need to just type it out going forward and remove this risk.
This must have been why the application went pending. It appears you can put whatever name you want to on your Amex credit card but it will be tied to your legal name on the account (although I don’t recommend this). It even says in the disclosure that you can essentially put what you want but some places of business may not take the card if it doesn’t match your ID etc.
After going through everything they changed the name on the account but were unable to send us a new card with the correct name. I guess chat reps are not able to do this until an account has been open for 10 days or more. They wanted to give us a number to call but we said we would just wait the 10 days. I think we should be able to do it online if we wanted to at that point anyway. We were told the card, with my name on it, should work until we ask for the replacement.
Chrome Autofill Application Error: Final Thoughts
This is a weird one for sure. We joked on this week’s upcoming podcast that Joe should do this to get around his wife’s one card sign up per year rule. I find it interesting that this was even able to get through the approval process. With the fact that you can change the name on your card fairly easily I guess I shouldn’t be. It looks like you can do this online on your login too under account services and then profile.
One thing I learned is we will never use Chrome auto fill again when filling out an application. Too many potential pitfalls to save me a few finger punches on my keyboard.
Anyone else ever had something like this happen? Let me know down in the comments!
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In process of an app for Amazon branded Chase card for wifey. Must have done the same thing to me because they went to pending and When she called them she found out it was submitted in my name.
Her SSN was tagged for the pull so that was not changed. I was told the easiest thing is to let it time out and fail and re-apply under her name properly. Problem with that is there was a $200 AMZ GC welcome bonus that is not in effect now if reapplication is done. So I may call them again and see if they would reconsider changing it to her name and approve it. Frustrating lesson to learn the hard way. I believe the “name” field was no longer on the app screen as I had scrolled down while filling it out and I must have let the address autofill, causing the issue.
Did you use your wife’s EIN or did it auto fill your SSN? (Scary if auto fill has your SSN saved).
No it was my wife’s Soc Sec number. Was a personal app not business, not auto filled there 🙂
Just happened to me. Got approved immediately, though. Applied for wife, card came in my name. I did double check autofil. Guess I’ll need to call tomorrow. Maybe amex is just having a bad week. Wife was applying for gold amex. ♂️
Did you really not check it over before sending such an important document?
It was my 5th application of the day so I got a little lazy there it appears
Learned a long time ago to *never* trust autofill on anything. It just is too much chance of weird stuff happening.
Now you tell me Carl! 🙂
Thanks to Autofill, I have one card where my middle name is just the first 3 letters of my last name.
Haha – nice.