topic Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process in Credit Card Approvals

UPDATE: AMEX BCE APPROVAL!! RECON SUCCESS

ccb2115 — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:20:10 GMT

So as some of you already know, I had applied for the Amex BCE. I will bullet point what has happened since.

1. Applied and was declined on July 30th.

2. Received letter explaining why and noticed they had used a report from June. (Util was 89% at that time)

3. Called to ask what I can do about that situation.

4. Was told to fax in updated report for Recon, no Hard pull

5. Was hard pulled anyway and was declined again.

6. Received letter explaining why...

So that brings me to today. I just checked my mail and see that they again based my decision off of a report from mid July....I applied on July 30th. Reports had updated on July 28th.

I mean do I just have bad luck or what? Why didn't they base this recon decision off of the reports I faxed in AND the hardpulled report they did in the beginning of August that they told me I wouldn't be receiving. I am so very much confused

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

LS2982 — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:29:42 GMT

Have you talked to anyone from the executive offices?

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

Anonymous — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:30:38 GMT

I thinkrecon with Amex is almost a complete waste of time. Do you have other Amex? In not and your scores are accurate, then you are extremely marginal. I would wait. Fact is I expect another hard pull with recon with Amex no matter what they say.

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

LS2982 — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:35:59 GMT

They may HP again but if you explain that you've already been pulled twice they may just SP. (purely YMMV but worth a shot)

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

ccb2115 — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:38:22 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I thinkrecon with Amex is almost a complete waste of time. Do you have other Amex? In not and your scores are accurate, then you are extremely marginal. I would wait. Fact is I expect another hard pull with recon with Amex no matter what they say.

Scores are not accurate. My scores are now about 715ish. Not that is really any better. Anyway, I do have an Amex Zync, and I am an AU on another positive account. I don't really care anymore that they hard pulled me. I'm just confused as to why they did not base my recon decision off of the report they pulled. They based it off of another soft pull from before the date I applied. The reasoning is still the same as before because it is basically the same report.

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

Anonymous — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:46:10 GMT

Now I am really mixed up. If you hold zync, why worry bout any rejection? Rejections should be soft pull. If recon got you hard pull, that was a mistake on your part. If rejected, you should just hold off for a couple of months and apply again.

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

ccb2115 — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 19:54:30 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Now I am really mixed up. If you hold zync, why worry bout any rejection? Rejections should be soft pull. If recon got you hard pull, that was a mistake on your part. If rejected, you should just hold off for a couple of months and apply again.

Yes, but you are not understanding my issue. I get it. I am to blame for the hard pull. I am not conerned about that.

I am just wondering if it is normal for them to hardpull during the recon process and then send a denial letter based off of a soft pull from July 21st, and not the hard pull on August 7th.

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

LS2982 — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 20:01:49 GMT

@CCB you should call executive office and speak with a supervisor, hopefully they can look at that updated report.

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

ccb2115 — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 23:05:49 GMT

So instead of calling the executive office, I decided to email the SVP of New Accounts. Figured I'd give it a try. I stated my case and confusion. So today, I got a call back from the executive office early this afternoon.

The woman I spoke with was very nice and was prepared with answers to all of my concerns. She said she investigated the situation and was able to prove that I was told incorrect information regarding the hard pull. She said she will remove the hard inquiry and has already spoken to the employee that misinformed me.

She explained to me why I was declined but was not able to explain why they had not used my August 7 report. She said the reason was probably because my report was exactly the same. I said that's not the case and the reason why I wanted my application manually reviewed in the first place. At this point I could sense that she was confused and didnt have an answer for me. She said if I would like she can soft pull and try again. She said she cannot guarantee approval, but if my report is different, she will just try it now. So she put me on hold and came back and said that the reason why I was declined again was because they soft me the 21st of every month. So they used an old report again and did not like what they saw, so they really didn't factor in the hard pulled report. So she said since tomorrow is the 21st she will try again for me and call me back with the results.

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 23:13:07 GMT

@ccb2115 wrote:
So instead of calling the executive office, I decided to email the SVP of New Accounts. Figured I'd give it a try. I stated my case and confusion. So today, I got a call back from the executive office early this afternoon.

The woman I spoke with was very nice and was prepared with answers to all of my concerns. She said she investigated the situation and was able to prove that I was told incorrect information regarding the hard pull. She said she will remove the hard inquiry and has already spoken to the employee that misinformed me.

She explained to me why I was declined but was not able to explain why they had not used my August 7 report. She said the reason was probably because my report was exactly the same. I said that's not the case and the reason why I wanted my application manually reviewed in the first place. At this point I could sense that she was confused and didnt have an answer for me. She said if I would like she can soft pull and try again. She said she cannot guarantee approval, but if my report is different, she will just try it now. So she put me on hold and came back and said that the reason why I was declined again was because they soft me the 21st of every month. So they used an old report again and did not like what they saw, so they really didn't factor in the hard pulled report. So she said since tomorrow is the 21st she will try again for me and call me back with the results.

It's great that you finally got some answers and that at the very least they removed the hard inquiry. You might want to try changing your cc due dates so that the best possible util is reflected on reports pulled on the 21st? Hope they approve you in the end. I requested a recon last Monday & was just approved an hr ago so you never know.

Keep us posted...

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

ccb2115 — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 00:28:45 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@ccb2115 wrote:
So instead of calling the executive office, I decided to email the SVP of New Accounts. Figured I'd give it a try. I stated my case and confusion. So today, I got a call back from the executive office early this afternoon.

The woman I spoke with was very nice and was prepared with answers to all of my concerns. She said she investigated the situation and was able to prove that I was told incorrect information regarding the hard pull. She said she will remove the hard inquiry and has already spoken to the employee that misinformed me.

She explained to me why I was declined but was not able to explain why they had not used my August 7 report. She said the reason was probably because my report was exactly the same. I said that's not the case and the reason why I wanted my application manually reviewed in the first place. At this point I could sense that she was confused and didnt have an answer for me. She said if I would like she can soft pull and try again. She said she cannot guarantee approval, but if my report is different, she will just try it now. So she put me on hold and came back and said that the reason why I was declined again was because they soft me the 21st of every month. So they used an old report again and did not like what they saw, so they really didn't factor in the hard pulled report. So she said since tomorrow is the 21st she will try again for me and call me back with the results.
It's great that you finally got some answers and that at the very least they removed the hard inquiry. You might want to try changing your cc due dates so that the best possible util is reflected on reports pulled on the 21st? Hope they approve you in the end. I requested a recon last Monday & was just approved an hr ago so you never know.
Keep us posted...

Congrats on your approval!

Is it that easy to change payment due dates? I know I am able to change the date on my Citi, but I am not sure about Discover and Barclays. Anywho, yeah it was nice to finally speak to someone who had some answers. I really had no expectations going into the call. I just wanted to know what happened with the report they pulled, and why was it not used during the manual review. She pretty muched answered all of my questions. Getting the inquiry knocked off was certaintly a plus, and having her offer to review everything again (with no hard inq) once they soft my updated report is an even bigger plus. App status is "In Progress". We will see.

Re: Confused by Amex Recon Process

ccb2115 — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 23:51:48 GMT

My status had been "In Progress" for almost two weeks, and now says Approved!!!! I was in correspondence with a very nice lady from in the Executive Referrals Dept. about the process and she kept apologizing telling me that for some odd reason, the manual reviewers had not updated her with an answer yet. I called again today and she said they still had not updated her with any decisions, but that she would push back on them today for an answer and would give me a call by the end of the day. I told her that it's been almost a month since I applied so maybe it would just be easier to cancel the app and reapply on the 30th. She said I could do that, but she wanted me to hold on a bit longer, at least until the end of the day, to see if they would have an answer by then. She did not call me before the end of the day, but I just checked my status and it says Approved!! I'm so happy! My first Amex Revolver!!

Re: UPDATE 2: APPROVED!RECON SUCCESS!! Confused by Amex Recon Process

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:07:26 GMT

CONGRATS!!! Call the automated num to find out what your CL is. this is the 3rd successful amex recon (including mine) that I've seen on this forum in the past week or so. Glad your persistence paid off. You should try & get your BCE overnighted. Also curious as to what your apr is after the promo period ends. mine is 17.24, the lowest for the card, which is dirty of ironic considering that they denied me for the card initially. I'm betting they give you 17.24 as well.

Re: UPDATE 2: APPROVED!RECON SUCCESS!! Confused by Amex Recon Process

ccb2115 — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:22:27 GMT

Were you able to get yours overnighted?

Re: UPDATE 2: APPROVED!RECON SUCCESS!! Confused by Amex Recon Process

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:32:01 GMT

No but I didn't try calling the exec office. I know others on this sure were able to. I suggested it because it took two weeks for your recon to go thru & you applied almost a month ago plus you have been in contact with the exec office already. right after I was approved I called a few diff amex numbers to try & get my card overnighted but each csr I spoke with transferred me to a diff dept & then those reps told me they don't handle that & that I was transferred to the wrong dept. I got fed up & decided to just wait 5 days for my card. But if you call the exec office & speak with the woman who's been overseeing your recon, you'll prob be able to hey it overnighted.
Please excuse typos as I'm writing this on my phone.

Re: UPDATE 2: APPROVED!RECON SUCCESS!! Confused by Amex Recon Process

ccb2115 — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:34:37 GMT

Just called and checked. My CL is 1,000. Womp womp. But I guess it doesn't really matter. I read on here that they usually give out 1,000 CL's if you were borderline, or approved after a Recon. I do have a ton of inquires on EX and a CO from 2008, so I shouldn't complain at all. I will treat this card like a new child.

Re: UPDATE 2: APPROVED!RECON SUCCESS!! Confused by Amex Recon Process

nicholasyud — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:01:01 GMT

you make me wanna apply so freakin bad but too bad im in garden right now ;-(

Re: UPDATE 2: APPROVED!RECON SUCCESS!! Confused by Amex Recon Process

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 01:28:28 GMT

Congrats ccb! I've been watching this thread and hoping for the best. Your persistence (and frustrations!!!!) paid off!

Re: UPDATE: AMEX BCE APPROVAL!! RECON SUCCESS

CreditChampion — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 03:03:42 GMT

Contrary to popular belief you can recon AMEX....I was persitant and got my father an AMEX after several calls

Re: UPDATE 2: APPROVED!RECON SUCCESS!! Confused by Amex Recon Process

ccb2115 — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 01:30:15 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
No but I didn't try calling the exec office. I know others on this sure were able to. I suggested it because it took two weeks for your recon to go thru & you applied almost a month ago plus you have been in contact with the exec office already. right after I was approved I called a few diff amex numbers to try & get my card overnighted but each csr I spoke with transferred me to a diff dept & then those reps told me they don't handle that & that I was transferred to the wrong dept. I got fed up & decided to just wait 5 days for my card. But if you call the exec office & speak with the woman who's been overseeing your recon, you'll prob be able to hey it overnighted.
Please excuse typos as I'm writing this on my phone.

Awesome. The card was overnighted to me. I didn't have to ask. I just looked and my my APR is also 17.24