AmEx re-age question...

[JLL2104]

I recently got an AmEx green card for personal use. Member since April 2019

Don’t know why I thought about it but remembered I had a corporate Amex through my company almost 20 years ago. I actually still have the card! Will AmEx call me a “member since 2001”?

[Anonymous]

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@JLL2104 wrote:
I recently got an AmEx green card for personal use. Member since April 2019

Don’t know why I thought about it but remembered I had a corporate Amex through my company almost 20 years ago. I actually still have the card! Will AmEx call me a “member since 2001”?

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No; the Member Since date is according to when a personal account was first created.

[MrDisco99]

Funny... I was an AU on my mom's Amex back in 1992.  I opened my own Amex for the first time in 2005, and then closed it in 2008, went dormant for years, and got one again in 2017.  My BCE from two years ago said member since 2017 on it, but every card I've gotten since then says member since 1992.

[JLL2104]

Was I considered an AU on the corporate card? My name was on it

[Remedios]

The account itself would not be backdated, so "Member since whenever" is just cosmetic.

[Anonymous]

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@JLL2104 wrote:
Was I considered an AU on the corporate card? My name was on it

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Personal cards, Small Business cards, and Corporate Cards are run on different systems within Amex.  Corporate cards are guaranteed by your employer so that didn't make you an Amex member although you had a corporate card.  The "Member Since" date is based on when your personal account was created. And in any event, as already pointed out, its just cosmetic since Amex stopped backdating credit history with the credit bureaus in March, 2015.

[Lucifer]

AMEX isn't backdating anymore.   And in some of those scenarios - even if they did those wouldn't qualify.

[Anonymous]

How's this? My Canadian Amex cards say "member since 2017"

My American ones say "member since 2015." I had a Canadian Amex card that gave 6% back on restaurants for the the first six months back in 2015. When I got a new card in 2017 on the Canadian side it didn't pick it up, but when I used global transfer to get a US card, it had the older reference.

[Anonymous]

Sorry to chime in on an older post, but I know for a fact (and can prove it) that AMEX does backdate some accounts.  In my experience, I had both business and personal charge/credit cards with AMEX since 2006.  After the great recession of 2008-2009, AMEX closed my accounts in 2010.  I did, however, pay off every penny owed to them and they extended me an Optima card which I declined citing that I was not interested until I qualified for their Prime products. For context, I had the following AMEX cards from 2006-2010:

AMEX Platinum Charge card - NPSL

AMEX Business Platinum Charge card - NPSL

AMEX Starwood Preferred credit card - (can't remember the cl)

Fast-forward to July of 2019 when credit scores looked good (the three ranged from 720-779), so I decided to apply for AMEX after nearly a decade. Checked the prequal page and had satisfactory news for their Delta SkyMiles Gold. And, BAM! Got the card with a startling CL of $11,500.  Then I pressed my luck and wanted to try the special edition Rose Gold card and was approved minutes after....then I got greedy because I travel extensively and was an existing Hilton Diamond (earned through nights) and applied for the AMEX Aspire card and was approved for $4,000 startling CL.  Yes, 3 new AMEX card approvals in under 30 minutes.

BUT, I noticed that when I created my online profile the night I was approved for all three cards, it said "Member since 2019".  I decided to engage with an AMEX online chat representative and he was courteous and stated he'd put in the request. I didn't hear anything for two weeks until I received an e-mail stating that they were sending me my new AMEX Rose Gold charge card with the new member date. When I logged into the AMEX website and phone app, it said "Member since 2006" across all accounts.  So, for anyone wondering, I successfully backdated my AMEX accounts to my original member since year.

[FinStar]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Sorry to chime in on an older post, but I know for a fact (and can prove it) that AMEX does backdate some accounts.  In my experience, I had both business and personal charge/credit cards with AMEX since 2006.  After the great recession of 2008-2009, AMEX closed my accounts in 2010.  I did, however, pay off every penny owed to them and they extended me an Optima card which I declined citing that I was not interested until I qualified for their Prime products. For context, I had the following AMEX cards from 2006-2010:

AMEX Platinum Charge card - NPSL

AMEX Business Platinum Charge card - NPSL

AMEX Starwood Preferred credit card - (can't remember the cl)

Fast-forward to July of 2019 when credit scores looked good (the three ranged from 720-779), so I decided to apply for AMEX after nearly a decade. Checked the prequal page and had satisfactory news for their Delta SkyMiles Gold. And, BAM! Got the card with a startling CL of $11,500.  Then I pressed my luck and wanted to try the special edition Rose Gold card and was approved minutes after....then I got greedy because I travel extensively and was an existing Hilton Diamond (earned through nights) and applied for the AMEX Aspire card and was approved for $4,000 startling CL.  Yes, 3 new AMEX card approvals in under 30 minutes.

BUT, I noticed that when I created my online profile the night I was approved for all three cards, it said "Member since 2019".  I decided to engage with an AMEX online chat representative and he was courteous and stated he'd put in the request. I didn't hear anything for two weeks until I received an e-mail stating that they were sending me my new AMEX Rose Gold charge card with the new member date. When I logged into the AMEX website and phone app, it said "Member since 2006" across all accounts.  So, for anyone wondering, I successfully backdated my AMEX accounts to my original member since year.

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I think the distinction needs to be made on the Member Since date and 'backdating' of credit report data.  The Member Since date can always be adjusted by AmEx for any new cards obtained to reflect the initial membership information.  As far as reporting on the CRAs, the backdating practice ended around March 2015.   Any new AmEx CCs obtained after that period will not 'backdate' for reporting purposes.