Update: Julian was able to get the 75,000 points successfully, you can read more about that here.
American Express let’s you check for pre-approved offers on both their personal and business credit cards, when doing so you’ll often find that the sign up bonus is higher than the public sign up bonus. Today I received an e-mail from Julian (of Bet You Didn’t Know & Devil’s Advocate fame) in which he told me about a new way he received one of these offers.
[Read: Pre-approval links for each credit card issuer]
A New Way To View Offers
When checking his Amex sync offers Julian was presented with this:
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that almost anybody can get 100,000 points on this card simply by calling in (and it’s possible for everybody to get the 75,000 offer a well) on the American Express Business Platinum card. The upside of the offer that Julian received is that the minimum spend requirement is only $5,000 (rather than $10,000 or $15,000).
What Makes This Even More Interesting
A lower minimum spend requirement is great, but since most people will be able to get the 100,000 point offer this still isn’t much to write home about. The real kicker comes in the fine print. Usually American Express business cards will state the following under “Offer Terms”/”Welcome Offer”:
Welcome bonus offer not available to applicants who have or have had this product within the last 12 months
If we look at that section on Julian’s offer, that fine print is nowhere to be seen!
This means that even though Julian received the sign up bonus on this card recently, he should be able to get it again. Obviously American Express might decide to enforce the 12 month rule even though it’s not listed, but I think you’d have a pretty valid complaint if they did this.
Final Thoughts
It makes sense for American Express to list targeted offers in their Amex Offers section, it saves them on marketing costs associated with direct mail outs. I think the reason the 12 month language is missing is because they’d assumed that their system wouldn’t offer a targeted sign up bonus to somebody who’d applied for the card recently, there is usually a significant lag time in these offers going out though which is why this might have happened.
In all likelihood American Express will add this language, but at the moment it’s not there. This is even bigger if personal cards are offered as it’s only possible to get those bonuses once per lifetime. You can view all the bonus rules & how many times you can get the bonus for each card issuer here.
Thanks again to Julian for the heads up. If you haven’t read any of his work before, I can strongly recommend reading Devil’s Advocate on Travel Codex & Bet You Didn’t Know on Frequent Miler. By far the funniest blogger in this space and always has a unique voice.
