I think this issue is symptomatic of larger issues with the board. People post their experiences and things they have learned over time, others read this and apply it to their situation. The ones for whom it works repeat the advice in progressively absolute terms until it becomes a fact. People with little experience then read these "facts" and apply them to situations they were never intended for, with negative consequences. They then post these negative consequences. Cycle repeats.
If you are trying to keep people from misinterpreting what you write, you are doomed to failure. If you try to set out some basic rules, you can expect someone to instantly post an exception based on their personal experiences. All of this is symptomatic of a large group of people trying to predict behavior based on intentionally incomplete information. The fact that the majority of the participants ended up here because of a previous mistake (or series of mistakes) only increases the chances of additional mistakes happening.
So here is what I take from all the Amex threads (of which there are undoubtedly more since I started typing): Amex is unique in allowing you to apply for a CLI of up to 3x your current limit after 61 day and it will be a soft pull. This is information I would never have discovered without this board. I found this information useful, as have many others. But...Anything beyond this statement is speculation. Speculation that might be useful to some members of the board? Sure. But speculation nonetheless, like:
In general, people with higher incomes who push a lot of charges through their cards tend to get more favorable treatment from Amex than those who dont. Some people violate very aspect of the collective wisdom assembled about Amex and still get approved. Some do everything the collective wisdom dictates and get no love at all. There are exceptions to every rule and the principle of reporting bias suggests that the exceptions are more likely to post their results.
Nobody on this board has access to the data being used by the decisionmakers. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of credit in general: people are making decisions that impact your life and they won't tell you the basis for that decision, because to do so would be to give proprietary information to their competitors. So we try to take our own experiences, combine them with others and arrive at some general concensus. But anyone, ANYONE, who takes this as gospel is being foolish and to blame the original posts is like blaming the engineers every time some idiot wrecks his Ferrari going too fast on Mulholland in the rain. And someone posting about how he drove his Ferrari at 80mph from Sunset to Malibu in a hurricane without problems doesn't relieve the original owner of responsibility.
Are there people posting on this forum assuming the 3x cli is a given, just like getting a zync guarantees a BCE 6 months later? Yep. Caveat emptor.
In wallet: Ink Plus 10k, AMEX TE 25k. In bag: CSP 16k, USAA WMC 15k, Hyatt 13k, United MPE 12k, AMEX HHonors 3k. In SD: Cap 1 QS 5k, Discover IT 7k. FICO 08 says my EQ is now 844, was 510 in 2010.
