I wanted to share a data point about this program that I recently learned. For those that may not be aware, if you have a Corporate American Express through your job that you use for corporate expenses, then you may qualify for the AMEX Corporate Advantage Program. The program basically gives you a discount off the annual fee of a Personal AMEX card since you hold a Corporate AMEX. The American Express site here provides details: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/gcpadvantage/login/
I spoke with AMEX as I recently learned of the program, have a corporate card, but was not receiving the discounted annual fee. I learned a couple of things during the conversation.
- The discounted annual fee does not apply to the Charles Schwab or Morgan Stanley Platinum. It only applies to the non-branded Platinum Card.
- If you do not apply through the Corporate Advantage Link then you will NOT receive the credit for the first year of the annual fee. You can however contact AMEX through chat or phone call to have them update the personal card for the credit to start in Year 2 and further as long as you maintain the Corporate Card.
- If you use the same login for your corporate card and personal card, then the system will automatically pickup the discount when appropriate. (I have a separate login for my corporate card vs all my personal cards)
Please note, there can be a good reason to bypass the the annual fee discount in the first year such as if you are using someone's referral link where the welcome bonus would be more valuable than the discount on the annual fee. i.e. my gold card referral gives 90k points vs the 50k points offered at the corporate advantage site; so that may be a reason for someone to not use the site during the application process, but to contact AMEX after card issuance to get the discounted annual fee starting the next year. Hope this helps and provides a few additional data points about the program that I was not able to find elsewhere.
Current Score: Eq: 823 Tu: 830
@Jayy -- thanks for the data points. I agree it is YMMV when not applying through the links. I also spoke with multiple representatives and received different answers from each on. The first rep said if I'd had my corporate card on the same account as my personal cards then the credit would have applied automatically, but she was applying the credit to my cards right away. 4-weeks passed so I spoke with another rep that said they were applying the credits to my Gold and Vanilla Platinum, but could not apply it to my CS Platinum because it would not apply to that card. Then the most recent rep I spoke with said that I actually did not qualify for the credit for the "first year" because I did not apply through the special link, but they will send it over to apply the credit for "next year" which is basically the year after I asked. I did pull the "I've been with AMEX for 20 years and held a corporate card since 2013 and just learned about this program". So she said she was going to send my account for review to see if I can have the credit applied immediately because that is what the past 2 reps told me. Well, that has been 2 weeks, so I will check back next week and let you all know.
Just an update. I did receive approval to have the Corporate Advantage Program contribution applied to my non-branded Platinum, and my Gold card, for the first year even though I had not applied through the special link and I had received the higher welcome offer. As mentioned above, YMMV, but the take I received from the AMEX rep is that in the first year, you would receive either (1)corporate advantage program discount off the annual fee, or (2)higher welcome offer bonus.
