So here I am in the garden until March 2nd, 2018 ... but this morning a little voice in the back of my head said "oh go on ... check the Amex prequal ... aren't you curious?". I'm guessing some of you are familiar with that voice. 
So i checked, figuring that I'd see the same two prequalified cards with no rewards offer / no stated APR and then back to the garden I'd go. Not so ... for the first time, Amex offered me:
- Everyday with 15,000 rewards points and 0% intro APR for 15 months , then 17.99%.
... and the:
- BCE with $150 back and 0% intro APR for 15 months, then 17.99%
... which is a milestone. But as tempting as it is 'm going to stay in the garden ... assuming that I may get a higher CL if I wait until my AAOA is 12 months. But I do have a couple of newbie questions, just out of curiosity:
1. Are Amex prequalifies generally pretty solid?
2. What do you think of the offers? Are they average? (given my scores, length of credit history, and AAOA) Can I expect better offers when my AAOA is 12 months?
3. How common / rare are Amex prequalifies? My plan is to wait until March (hoping for a higher CL) ... but would I be smart to snag a card now because I might have to wait a very long time for another offer? Or are offers pretty common once a certain level of credit-worthiness is reached?
Thanks ... this is a great forum ... couldn't have gotten my scores up where they are without it.
@Anonymous wrote:So here I am in the garden until March 2nd, 2018 ... but this morning a little voice in the back of my head said "oh go on ... check the Amex prequal ... aren't you curious?". I'm guessing some of you are familiar with that voice.
- Everyday with 15,000 rewards points and 0% intro APR for 15 months , then 17.99%.
... and the:
- BCE with $150 back and 0% intro APR for 15 months, then 17.99%
... which is a milestone. But as tempting as it is 'm going to stay in the garden ... assuming that I may get a higher CL if I wait until my AAOA is 12 months. But I do have a couple of newbie questions, just out of curiosity:
1. Are Amex prequalifies generally pretty solid?
2. What do you think of the offers? Are they average? (given my scores, length of credit history, and AAOA) Can I expect better offers when my AAOA is 12 months?
3. How common / rare are Amex prequalifies? My plan is to wait until March (hoping for a higher CL) ... but would I be smart to snag a card now because I might have to wait a very long time for another offer? Or are offers pretty common once a certain level of credit-worthiness is reached?
Thanks ... this is a great forum ... couldn't have gotten my scores up where they are without it.
1. Yes, they're pretty solid for the most part.
2. Pretty good actually. Considering the lowest APR is 14% and highest is 24%-ish for those cards you're in the middle of the pack so you shouldn't be lowballed with the SL assuming your income is solid. And of course the higher your score is the better chance you'll have of getting better terms. Offer wise I think that's best ED is; BCE can be a little better with the bonus if you want to go the incognito route to get best bonus which is $250-$300 I think.
3. Since your credit is only gonna get better with inquiries/accounts aging good chance those offers are there to stay. Like you put it you reached the certain credit plateau you're good for getting solid offers from here on out.
@Anonymous wrote:
- Everyday with 15,000 rewards points and 0% intro APR for 15 months , then 17.99%.
... and the:
- BCE with $150 back and 0% intro APR for 15 months, then 17.99%
... which is a milestone. But as tempting as it is 'm going to stay in the garden ... assuming that I may get a higher CL if I wait until my AAOA is 12 months.
I would not guess that you will get a better starting limit in 12 months, vs taking a $1k AMEX now and using it properly, then using the 3X CLI method to build your increases over the next year.
$1k (or perhaps $500) now. In 6 months (skip the first 61 days, too new of an overall profile) then go to $3,000 or $1,500. A year from now, 3x again to perhaps $4,500, depending on the rest of your profile. I doubt you would get $4k SL on these cards a year from now.
@Anonymous wrote:So here I am in the garden until March 2nd, 2018 ... but this morning a little voice in the back of my head said "oh go on ... check the Amex prequal ... aren't you curious?". I'm guessing some of you are familiar with that voice.
- Everyday with 15,000 rewards points and 0% intro APR for 15 months , then 17.99%.
... and the:
- BCE with $150 back and 0% intro APR for 15 months, then 17.99%
... which is a milestone. But as tempting as it is 'm going to stay in the garden ... assuming that I may get a higher CL if I wait until my AAOA is 12 months. But I do have a couple of newbie questions, just out of curiosity:
1. Are Amex prequalifies generally pretty solid?
2. What do you think of the offers? Are they average? (given my scores, length of credit history, and AAOA) Can I expect better offers when my AAOA is 12 months?
3. How common / rare are Amex prequalifies? My plan is to wait until March (hoping for a higher CL) ... but would I be smart to snag a card now because I might have to wait a very long time for another offer? Or are offers pretty common once a certain level of credit-worthiness is reached?
Thanks ... this is a great forum ... couldn't have gotten my scores up where they are without it.
You can get better offers. You might have to open the browser incognito mode after clearing your history. But I was able to get 250 dollars back offer approved a couple of days ago for the BCE. Also got 25,000 point offer from Everyday and 25,000 point offer for Green Card which I did not take. These aren't prequalify as I only ever prequalify for Green card with no points. I don't know what interest rate I got on the BCE other than it was 12 months zero percent. I dont' carry a balance so I don't really check interest rates too closely.
Thx for everyone's feedback ...
Update: I couldn't resist ... applied yesterday for the Everday card and was approved for 1k When I applied I got a 14 day message, but today got an approval email.
Weirdly, after Amex did an Experian hard pull today, my EX score went up by 12 points since yesterday. nice! So now I'm back in the garden for real until next year ... with a steel bolt on the gate.
- Can I expect a 3x increase in 91 days?
- When I logged into Amex it says I've been a member since 1988 (Green card charged off in 1991 ... was on blacklist for 15 years). Will 1988 now determine my length of credit history in credit reports?
Hey congrats on your amex approval gamewithrules!
I would probably wait 'til after 6 months before you hit that luv button for a better result though it won't hurt to do it on the 91st as it's a SP anyways.
Your amex webpage will say 1988 but your CRA reports will be Jul 2017 as a new acct. My DW had reopened an amex last year. It says Member since 2007 but her CRA report it as 2016.
By the way, you said you had a CO with them in 1991 so wouldn't that be an 18 year blacklist instead of 15? 3 yrs is a lot of years to go by for a blacklisted guy like myself dying to get back into their fold!
I would probably wait 'til after 6 months before you hit that luv button for a better result though it won't hurt to do it on the 91st as it's a SP anyways.
Your amex webpage will say 1988 but your CRA reports will be Jul 2017 as a new acct. My DW had reopened an amex last year. It says Member since 2007 but her CRA report it as 2016.
By the way, you said you had a CO with them in 1991 so wouldn't that be an 18 year blacklist instead of 15? 3 yrs is a lot of years to go by for a blacklisted guy like myself dying to get back into their fold!
JR_TX, the more I think about it ... I don't actually know how long I was blacklisted. The charge off disappeared from credit reports after 15 years but I may have been blacklisted much longer than that ... I never tried applying to find out. I read here on myFico recently that if the Amex prequalify page gives you an offer that means you're off the blacklist ... so I tried and got offers.
Thanks for the 3x increase advice ... I'll wait for 6 months. Better safe than sorry ...