Every credit card issuer offer different rules and requirements. So, to help you differentiate between different credit cards, we created posts, like this one, to help you understand all the important things you should know about credit cards. For this particular post, we will go over the details of American Express cards. Whether or not you know some or most of these things already, we hope you will find this list to be resourceful.
Things to Know
- If you are looking to apply for your first American Express card, wait for a good offer. If you don’t already have an American Express card, chances are you will receive a lot of targeted sign up bonuses from them. When you decide to sign up, be sure it is one worthwhile because once you take an offer, you’ll receive less offers there on after.
- There is a ‘once per lifetime’ limit on sign-up bonuses with American Express’ personal and business cards. You used to be able to get a sign-up bonus more than once, but as of May 2014, American Express will only allow you to get a sign up bonus once. This means you will need to thoroughly think about which card bonus you may want to apply for to ensure you’re getting the best possible bonus. At times, you can get a separate bonus for each business with a unique EIN/SSN.
- You can often get a bonus for adding an authorized user card, so it may worth waiting for one of these kind of offers.
- If you are promised an instant credit limit but don’t receive it right away, you may be eligible to get a bonus. However, this doesn’t always work. You just need to call and ask.
- You are only allowed a maximum of 4 American Express credit cards at one time. This only applies to credit cards issued by American Express. But you can have as many charge cards as you apply for, get approved for, and may want.
- American Express has the following application rules (Note: that this only applies to the credit cards and not their charge cards):
- You’re limited to one approved credit card every 5 day rolling period.
- You are also only allowed two approved credit cards every 90 rolling period.
- You can check your application status with American Express online. When signing up for a new American Express card, you will have the option to see your status and know exactly where you stand with the application.
- Sometimes, American Express will give you the credit card number instantly, upon approval of the card. They do this to allow you to use it immediately online if you need to make purchases immediately. Not many cards offer this.
- If you apply for multiple American Express cards, the hard inquiries will be combined. If you apply for more than one American Express card and your applications are approved on the same day, all of the hard inquiries will be combined. This will then be considered as a single inquiry. The catch though is that you can only apply for one credit card per day, so the key to this is to to add in charge cards to be successful. There is a possibility that you can mix both business and personal card applications.
- Every year, American Express runs ‘Small Business Saturday’. This is a way for American Express to increase the number of smaller merchants that will allow and accept American Express cards. To do so, they offer a bonus for card members every year. For example, last year you could receive three statement credits of $10 when you spent $10 or more at any small business Saturday that accepts American Express.
- American Express will periodically offer upgrade offers to their credit cards.
- Profit from American Express Sync offers. You can make money by simply buying gift cards and re-selling those. you can also get good discounts on purchases you plan on making as well. To give you a better idea, American Express will release offers (For example, you will receive a statement credit of $20 when you spend $100 or more at <name merchant>) and then you can use Twitter or such to sync these offers to each card. Note, not all offers can be synced via Twitter, so make sure to check the website every week or so to see if there are any individual offers you can get get a hold on.
- You have the capability to increase your credit limit by up to 3X the initial starting offered limit. American Express make a lot of money from interchange fees, so because of this, they want their cardholders to spend a lot of money. Therefore, if you request a credit limit increase, American Express will most likely approve an increase of up to 3X. This is very useful since your credit utilization since some card issuers typically don’t like to extend you more credit than what you’ve been extended. In addition, some cards have a minimum credit limit, so having a higher limit with an American Express card could possibly help you get approved for such cards.
- American Express can be generous with retention offers. Just call and ask. Often, most people only call retention when their annual fee is due (which you should do as well) but it is recommended that you call every 90 days or so. The regularly will give you 5,000 points or so for just for being a card holder or may even offer you a spending bonus amount.
- You can get a refund if you cancel an American Express card. If you cancel your credit card within 30 days of account opening, American Express will refund the annual fee. After the 30 day period, they used to refund it on a pro-rated basis. However, since September 1, 2016, they stopped doing so. For downgraded cards, it will still be pro-rated.
- If you apply for an American Express credit card and you are denied, you can still be re-considered. If you are denied when applying for an American Express credit card, call their re-consideration line. Call 800-567-1083 or 866-314-0237 to speak with a live credit analyst.
- If you’re an existing cardholder and apply for a new card, but they deny you – they will usually only do a soft pull. This is because they’ll usually check the credit report they already have on file for you.
- You do not have the ability to request a sign-up bonus match. Unfortunately, if you apply for an American Express credit card and find a higher sign-up bonus for the same card a couple days later, they will most likely not match it. However, they will give you ‘goodwill’ points as an option after you complete a formal request.
- If you set up auto pay with American Express they will adjust your auto-pay if you pay it in full or make a partial payment.
- American Express business credit cards don’t get reported to the personal credit bureaus. This can be useful in keeping your credit report cleaner.
- They allow you to re-allocate your credit limits online. If you choose to re-allocate your credit limit, it will allow you to take some of your credit limit from another card that you may not use often and add it to the card that you want a higher limit on. For this, it is not considered a hard pull, which is nice knowing.
- If an American Express credit card has been closed out, it can be re-instated upon request after being closed. If the card was closed by mistake or for a short time period, you could be able to convince them to re-open it with no hard pull.
- They will allow you to your view personalized credit card offers online. American Express allows you to view all of your targeted personal & business card offers online. You may view these offers online through credit card websites such as ours. We recommend to check regularly since these kind of offers don’t tend to last long.
- American Express will expedite stolen or lost credit cards. If you have lost or stolen your card(s), call 1-800-327-1267 and ask to speak to a representative to request a replacement card and it will automatically be expedited. There shouldn’t be any additional charge. They will also automatically expedite shipping on some of their premium products (e.g Platinum cards) for new applications. For lower end cards you can call and request for expedited shipping too, but it is been rumored that not all customer service representatives will do it.
Author’s Verdict
To re-cap on some key points, American Express is considered to be one of the more restrictive credit card issuers out there. For instance, you are limited to only a total of 4 credit card you can have under your name with them at a time. This includes both personal and business credit cards but does not include charge cards (please see the list above again if you aren’t sure of what I’m referring to).
And in the past, they used to allow you to get a sign-up bonus more than once on the same credit card. But now you are only allowed to get a sign up bonus once for one card. This means you will need to thoroughly think about which card bonus you may want to apply for to ensure you’re getting the best possible bonus.
All in all, we hope this list has helped you be more knowledgeable about American Express credit cards and what they have to offer as well as the limitations they may have that you may have not known about prior to reading this post.
If you are interested in learning more about credit cards or want to find the best credit cards currently being offered, check out our list of the best credit card bonuses.
Leave a Reply