Amex Cardmember Pre-approvals/Prequalified Offers

[Anonymous]

If you had applied the same day you would have been approved.  Once it's a new day, then there's a new hard pull that will notice there was a hard pull just yesterday and you'll get an automatic denial.

[cmm89]

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@Anonymous wrote:

If you had applied the same day you would have been approved.  Once it's a new day, then there's a new hard pull that will notice there was a hard pull just yesterday and you'll get an automatic denial.

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Not necessarily true. I've only had one HP from AmEx... when I got my now closed BCE. Not always the case for everyone on these forums, but a lot of folks get SP new accounts. The few times I've tried for the PRG without an approval, I didn't get an HP. I also didn't get an HP for my approval yesterday. 

[drboxing]

Got the preapproved message for Amex Platinum after clicking the offers link then logging onto my AMEX account. After putting my info in was denied

[Anonymous]

Let's all keep in mind the preapprovals are never guaranteed. Preapprovals only mean your credit profile meets a baseline criteria the lender is looking for ie score in a certain range or your history is long enough, etc. A legit guaranteed decision cannot be made until the application is processed and underwriting looks at the entire profile. Preapprovals just mean you have somewhat better odds.

[Anonymous]

Generally, those are called pre-qualified offers.  Pre-approval means that you have been approved, previously. The same goes for mortgages, you can be pre-approved meaning you have the funds ready to go from the bank or pre-qualified, meaning someone somewhere has looked at your finances.  The misleading thing here was that I called in and asked them specifically if this was a pre-approval or a pre-qualification and Apply by Phone told me that they were one in the same, which is not true. That should have been my first clue.  Never trust Apply by Phone, they are legally allowed to read scripts to you and type in your responses, that's about it.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the data I tried it and got a pre approval for their normal credit card and approved for 5k. Thank you

[Anonymous]

I assume you mean the green card then? They have gone through so many changes lately (and the green card is going away).  If I could give you a bit of free advice, make sure you pay attention to your account and balances for the first 93 days.  If you were given a membership rewards bonus for joining you only have that long to make the minimum spending requirement for the bonus and in some cases it's roughly equivalent to two free RT airline tickets.

[Sanjo812]

I've only seen the "Applying to expand your membership with us is easy,..." message above the application fields. I'll definitely check over time to see if it changes.

[MrDisco99]

I don't think I've gotten pre-approved or pre-selected or pre-qualified for any cards before applying for them and getting them. The only one where I saw I was "pre-selected" was for my first BoA app which was one of only two denials in recent history.

I kinda get the impression those messages just mean "you fit our target market datapoints" and not much more.

[Anonymous]

It's been a while since I've gone the pre-approved route, but my two Cap One cards were both pre-approved and all I had to do was click a link and presto chango, cards were issued.  Comenity's bank also does pre-approvals (if you do the shopping cart trick). I have tried this to see if the shopping cart trick actually worked (it does) and if I could get a pre-approval (I did, for Sharper Image, but didn't click through to see if the card was actually issued or the limit. - there was a soft pull on my report).

AmEx's computer systems have been horrible lately -- has anyone else tried to call in or do something online only to have the entire system go down and it generate some rather scary error?