Amex gold question..

[K-in-Boston]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Shadowfactor wrote:
Completely agree with KIB. Amex will forgive you if you close a card after a year or have one card that doesn’t get much spend provided you’re overall level of spend is acceptable to them.

My fiancée is locked out of welcome bonuses and I’ve spent 75K on her second ever Amex card and it’s not even a year old. Her first card was the delta gold where she hit the sub and it was almost nonexistent spend until the 12.5 month mark when she closed it.
No matter how much spend I throw at it, they aren’t budging on any welcome offers. I even tried BCE for the low non MR offers.

I’ve seen this theme a lot in the Facebook groups I moderate for, lots of people have this bright idea that they will game Amex and it comes back to bite them in the arse.

The funny thing is that Amex doesn’t really seem to care all that much about MS either. Sure if you’re stupid you’re screwed but they have been extremely tolerant IMO. They don’t like people breaking the rules though and welcome offers/SUB’s/referrals are a big sore spot.

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How much would this "overall acceptable" spending be?

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I don't think any of us can quantify that.  I originally brought up the point because common sense tells us that the Amex RAT team (is RAT team redundant like ATM machine or VIN number?) is going to be more tolerant for some cardmembers.  As we can see with @Shadowfactor that may be a high bar indeed.  So let's compare two cardholders; who is most likely to get the infamous popup?  I'm Person B if it matters.

Person A - Gets American Express Platinum Card through Cardmatch offer for 100k points.  Makes minimal spend, uses up all of the credits (and airline credit twice because it reset 01/01), and never uses the card for any other purchases.  Cancels card when the annual fee comes due.  Gets cobranded brokerage Platinum Card with waived AF first year.  Gets SUB, uses credits, uses airline credit twice because why not if it reset 01/01, never spent on it after SUB.  Closes card when AF is due.  This person has cost American Express THOUSANDS of dollars while only making them about $150 in swipe fees and getting one annual fee.

Person B - Has had several American Express cards for nearly 20 years and pays roughly $3,000 in AFs to Amex each year not including household members' accounts.  Has consistently spent about $40-75k across all Amex cards every year during that time, with occasional higher spend.  In 2018, spent over $110k on personal Amex cards (over $75k on one card alone).  Has never closed any Amex accounts.

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Even though I think I would probably be okay to churn churn churn a little with Amex, I don't dare risk the relationship and would be heartbroken to be excluded from Amex welcome offers as they are easily some of the most valuable in the credit world.

[CreditInspired]

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@Anonymous wrote:
If my wife gets the gold & we hit the minimum spend for the card & she closes it after the year can she transfer those MR to my account or no?

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Hi Jaybeltran805

I noticed you haven't returned. However, please note that the answer to your question is in post #2 from K-in-Boston. 

Sometimes--not often though--we may tend to forget the original question posted and our responses go awry. But we're human, and I just didn't want the answer to your question to get lost in the fray so-to-speak. 

[Anonymous]

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@K-in-Boston wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Shadowfactor wrote:
Completely agree with KIB. Amex will forgive you if you close a card after a year or have one card that doesn’t get much spend provided you’re overall level of spend is acceptable to them.

My fiancée is locked out of welcome bonuses and I’ve spent 75K on her second ever Amex card and it’s not even a year old. Her first card was the delta gold where she hit the sub and it was almost nonexistent spend until the 12.5 month mark when she closed it.
No matter how much spend I throw at it, they aren’t budging on any welcome offers. I even tried BCE for the low non MR offers.

I’ve seen this theme a lot in the Facebook groups I moderate for, lots of people have this bright idea that they will game Amex and it comes back to bite them in the arse.

The funny thing is that Amex doesn’t really seem to care all that much about MS either. Sure if you’re stupid you’re screwed but they have been extremely tolerant IMO. They don’t like people breaking the rules though and welcome offers/SUB’s/referrals are a big sore spot.

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How much would this "overall acceptable" spending be?

---

I don't think any of us can quantify that.  I originally brought up the point because common sense tells us that the Amex RAT team (is RAT team redundant like ATM machine or VIN number?) is going to be more tolerant for some cardmembers.  As we can see with @Shadowfactor that may be a high bar indeed.  So let's compare two cardholders; who is most likely to get the infamous popup?  I'm Person B if it matters.

Person A - Gets American Express Platinum Card through Cardmatch offer for 100k points.  Makes minimal spend, uses up all of the credits (and airline credit twice because it reset 01/01), and never uses the card for any other purchases.  Cancels card when the annual fee comes due.  Gets cobranded brokerage Platinum Card with waived AF first year.  Gets SUB, uses credits, uses airline credit twice because why not if it reset 01/01, never spent on it after SUB.  Closes card when AF is due.  This person has cost American Express THOUSANDS of dollars while only making them about $150 in swipe fees and getting one annual fee.

Person B - Has had several American Express cards for nearly 20 years and pays roughly $3,000 in AFs to Amex each year not including household members' accounts.  Has consistently spent about $40-75k across all Amex cards every year during that time, with occasional higher spend.  In 2018, spent over $110k on personal Amex cards (over $75k on one card alone).  Has never closed any Amex accounts.

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Even though I think I would probably be okay to churn churn churn a little with Amex, I don't dare risk the relationship and would be heartbroken to be excluded from Amex welcome offers as they are easily some of the most valuable in the credit world.

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Well, I am not gonna be person B. 75k is literally our household budget for the entire year, and that includes house and car mortgages.

Don't think I am churning amex, will just go ahead pc delta gold to blue. If thats not enough for amex, it is what it is. lol

[Anonymous]

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@Shadowfactor wrote:

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Amex is very tolerant to MS honestly, there's been very few people shut down for actual MS. It may have been a contributing factor for the last couple batch shutdowns but Amex seems to care much more about MS'ing the min spend or doing self referrals or selling miles by transferring to a "AU".

i know people that MS quite large amounts and have been doing so for extended periods of time. 10+ years. They don't do any  of the other dumb stuff. 

personally my "MS" is all organic business spend. I rarely do the VGC angle as it's just too time consuming. I do buy merchant GC's at grocery stores during sales to get gas points but Amex has a cap in place so as long as you don't abuse that, I firmly believe they gave people the ability to spend 25K which is far more then any regular household spends a year on groceries.

Amex needs the true heavy hitters of MS, they are the ones that spend a million + a year at 1X earnings. Once you hit a certain volume a year, you're going to run out of cards with multipliers. There's no way around that and Amex counts on that IMO. It's all about balancing their losses while still getting heavy spend. 

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Maybe it depends on definitions!  Some years back, the mass shutdown on OBC was purely to do with stopping MS on an uncapped card.  As one who was shutdown, I can't give Amex high marks for tolerance (but forgiveness, letting me open the same type of card one month later).   Earlier they capped the BCP in response to heavy MS, but didn't shut down then.  

Once the high rewards categories on cards are capped, issuers can be much more tolerant, as they can determine acceptable losses, so Shadowfactor might be right about the current situation