Question Of The Week: Am I Eligible For This Amex Welcome Offer?
Our reader question of the week: “Am I eligible for this Amex welcome offer?” We will start a deep dive series with question of the week from readers. We will pull these questions from our Facebook group. The goal is to help readers better understand questions that may have unique, changing, or complex answers and provide quality answers. If you’ve got questions, we are here to help! Let’s get into our first question of the week.
We will be highlighting the better questions on a weekly basis and going into more detail on them.
American Express Welcome Offer Eligibility
Ron asked the following:
I had the Amex Green card 18 years ago and did not get the bonus back then. Anyone know if I’d be able to apply and be eligible for the bonus now?
The response “you can’t get the bonus if you had the card before” was not a surprise, but this doesn’t paint the whole picture. Here are the important elements in Ron’s question:
Had the card before – but how long ago?
Typically, American Express has verbiage when applying for a card that you cannot get the welcome offer / bonus if you have or previously had the card. It’s “once in a lifetime”. HOWEVER, data shows that American Express typically considers 7 years to be a lifetime. Ron had the card 18 years ago, which is much longer.
No welcome offer / bonus received
American Express is tricky in that earning the welcome offer previously does not matter like with other lenders. Upgrading or downgrading into the card would count against you and the 7-year clock. That’s because you “had the card”. For example, if you upgraded an Amex Green to Gold you “had” the Gold card, regardless of whether or not you earned any bonuses. Amex cares about when you last held the card. If it was closed over 7 years ago you should be good to go.
Our Answer: Go For It!
We think Ron should be able to get this welcome offer. “Once in a lifetime” is typically more like “once in 7 years” with Amex. Just remember to check if you have upgraded or downgraded into the card or have held it at any point in the last 7 years. If he closed the card over 7 years ago Ron is good to go.
Obviously, if he sees the dreaded pop-up when trying to apply, that will tell him “no”. But that pop-up can be related to other things, not just this card, so it’s not a 100% correlation.
As long as Ron meets the other application rules, he should be ok. Here’s a quick reminder on the Amex application rules:
- Maximum of 4 credit cards and 10 cards without a preset limit
- Maximum of 2 cards within 90 days
Final Thoughts
“What it says on paper” is not always the same as “in practice”. Ron’s question highlights a good example of where these 2 things can be different. By digging into the question and relevant data for its answer, Ron should be eligible for this Amex welcome offer. That wraps up our first question of the week!
If you have questions you’d like us to examine, share them in our Facebook group.
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Excellent point.
It would also be helpful to have a similar post covering Amex’s stance regarding matching people to a better offer (in my case I applied for the 75k + $300 Resy offer and am wondering if they will match). So far the feedback I have received is that Amex will not match…is that consistent with your understanding?
I have never heard of Amex matching an offer. Sometimes they will offer up a smaller amount of courtesy points so worth a try.
I was the one who left the comment in the FB group, glad to see it get picked up on here. Unfortunately I did get the pop up, so I’ll try again in a few months. I got the pop up back in May too when I applied for the Schwab Platinum. Would love to see a future article on data points on those getting SUBs now after having gotten the pop-up for a while.
Ron – take a look here https://milestomemories.com/how-to-avoid-the-amex-pop-up/
I can attest to this from personal experience. I had a Green Card and closed it at least 15 years ago. I applied for the new Green Card, did not get the pop-up, and received my welcome bonus soon after hitting the spend target. My only issue with the card was getting my $100 Clear credit applied. I know this feels like eons ago, but I signed up for Clear back in February and took many calls and about 3 months to get the credit processed. Given I wasn’t traveling after March, I did have the extra time to explain the issue to each Amex rep but it took at least 4 tries to get it processed manually. That experience has soured me on renewing soon, so we’ll see what retention offer I get.
Thanks for sharing that data point! Very helpful.