Community -
I am on cloud 9 today as I just got approved for my first Amex Platinum! It's not the card itself that I'm proud of - it's the fact that I've had to climb out of a pretty HUGE hole in the last 18 months (the I dug myself into). For a quick snapshot of the issues I had to work through, here's the main portions:
- Credit scores on April 2020 was 542-557 between the 3 CRAs
- 7 charge offs on my report including 2 old AMEX accounts
- 2 collection accounts
- 1 car repossession
Funny enough, my journey back started after I received a letter in the mail from AMEX with the opportunity to settle my old Gold card charge-off and enter the Optima Oasis program. For those not familiar, it's AMEXs way of letting you back in and essentially putting you on probation for a year. So I decided to sign up and settle that balance for a lesser amount to get into the program. Then I got a letter from Chase (again for an old charge off). No program from them, but at that point I decided this was a sign for me to REALLY get my credit profile back in order. So I dug in, got my reports from all 3 CRAs, and began looking to settle the charge offs and get the collections PFD. I was very successful in getting the PFDs for the collections, and was able to settle all of my old charge-offs. So since April 2020, I've been managing my spend through the Optima Card and PIF every month and have gotten way better at managing my budget overall. I've always had decent income, but struggled with budgeting until last year. Fast forward to today. I've been in the Optima program for 14 months, and my FICO scores are way up (EQ - 697; TU - 701; EX - 694). My family and I are planning a ton of traveling now that things are back opening and we plan to continue to travel heavy for the next several years, so I was really itching to try my luck with the Platinum application.
I've read on this forum so many times how seeing the "You're pre-approved" in the application was a good sign and "Applying to extend membership" was usually a bad one. Fortunately, I can be a data point in the YMMV bucket because I had the "applying to extend membership" language but was still auto APPROVED!!! I have so many plans on how I want to build my AMEX setup to maximize rewards over the next year, but it had to start with this approval. If anyone reading this is in a bad spot, just know that if you put in the effort (and time), you WILL come out on the other side!
TL,DR: bad credit history, was in Optima Oasis program for 14 months, app'd for AMEX platinum, got "applying to extend membership" language and was still approved.
DPs
- 7 chargeoffs (all falling off between 2022-2024)
- 1% utilization
- 5 open CC's (Apple Card, Citi Secured, Amex Optima (oasis), First Premier (plan to close eventually), OpenSky (plan to close eventually)
- EQ (697); TU (701); EX (694)
