AMEX Hilton Honors Surpass - Denied

[YoungMoney06]

Has anyone ever applied for AMEX HH Surpass (or any AMEX card) and received a denial. Then when trying to read the decision letter sent in the email via AMEX's app status page... the application says "In progress." Unfortunately, I was denied after having the Gold card for nearly 5 months now and AMEX still doesn't want to show me any love.

Spoke to AMEX Support and they weren't necessarily able to help. Just wondering if anyone else experienced this.

[CreditPacMan]

This used to happen to me 10 years ago, when I would get denied the decision letter link never worked. I guess you will have to wait for the letter.

Sorry about the denial. Do you mind providing some DPs around your profile to help us speculate why they denied you?

[YoungMoney06]

@CreditPacMan Current FICO 8 scores are EQ=629, EX=641, TU=651. I know when I applied for the BCE about a month ago (testing the waters with AMEX, they declined due to FICO score per the letter.)

Figured I'd try this time for a partner card after waiting the 30 days... and of course, declined. Assumption is FICO score but I'm not 100% as I didn't get a clear reason for denial. Guess we'll wait and see... and as for AMEX... guess I'll give it a few more months and showing of responsible usage. Have moved most of my transactions (monthly bills) to a separate card... maybe they didn't like me using the Gold charge card heavily and paying off each month for the first couple months and then spreading the bills out amongst cards???

All theories at this point.

[PointsBonus]

From your signature I can see you have 1 AMEX Card, my suggestion would be to use the AMEX card like crazy, show AMEX some love, and AMEX will show some back, I still truly believe they are one of the "few relationship" banks. I hope you will soon see a lot of "pre-approvals" from them. 

With AMEX, TIME= Greatness

[Anonymous]

@YoungMoney06 

Definitely check the pre-approvals in your Amex profile first. I was approved for the Delta Gold $1k a couple of months ago, my first Amex, with Ex 659. I was just approved last week for the Hilton Aspire at Ex 669. I posted about it, if you want to see all the details, but the short of it is that I was pre-approved, applied, got denied, status link showed "in progress," a few minutes later got approval email with SL $3,100.

Also, keep in mind that they base decisions with what they currently have on file for you, regarding your FICO score. So if you are actively improving your score, what your score is today isn't necessarily what they are using for the decision.  In my case, when I applied this past wee, my Ex is around 680ish (701 boosted, but they don't use Ex boost), but the card agreement says my score was 669, which is the score that they had SP'd on 09/24.  You can check what they have on file by going to your profile page and clicking on "view FICO."  This score is updated every month, but ppl on here have reported that even though your profile score update on let's say Oct 12th, it takes  a couple of weeks before that score makes into the Amex decision algos.