My Interesting American Express Business Gold Approval (Plus, How To See Your AmEx Application History)

I had a bit of a strange experience when signing up for the AmEx Business Gold recently and figured I’d share.

I got an email offer on the Business Gold card for 125k points after $15k spend. This comes a couple of months after a Business Platinum approval. For me AmEx is usually pretty easy to get approved on and I decided to give it a shot.

I’ve consistently failed to get they mythical 200k Business Gold offer to show, despite numerous attempts and schemes. And so I had resigned myself to the 125k offer.

Just yesterday, a random google search gave me an ‘up to 200k’ sponsored ad hit and I immediately applied using that link. Unfortunately, at the end of the application, the system said I’m only eligible for 100k bonus, not 200k. And so I closed out the application without submitting with the intent of using the 125k link instead.

Strangely, I instantly got an email, “Thank you for applying for an American Express Card”, along with a reference number. My understanding had always been with AmEx (and similar with other issuers) that you can just abort the application before they show the final offer without the application having been submitted at all. Apparently, even that initial stage does get input as an ‘application’ in their system, with no hard pull. If you don’t follow up for 7 days then it just gets disregarded. 

Interestingly, the email gave me a link to access the application. At that link, there was a full of all my AmEx application history, including many cards I never applied for. Apparently, I had done some aborted applications before and the system always logged it as an application. (Partial image below.) In the past, I’ve never gotten the email from AmEx and so I always assumed nothing went through, but I now learned that these are all logged as applications in the AmEx system (with no hard pull). 

Since I wanted the 125k offer, I immediately applied again yesterday using my targeted 125k email link. The application came back pending.

I don’t often call into reconsideration, but given the duplicate applications I thought it prudent to call in to ensure that the second card application goes into the approval process. 

I explained to the rep what happened and asked him to cancel the first application and process the second one for approval. He was able to do so and pretty quickly confirmed my card approval. 

I verified with him again that it was the second application that was approved (the image below shows it in the reverse order), and he confirmed again. He was not able to verify anything about signup bonus details, and I’m hoping for the best. I’ll wait for the card to come and see if the tracker shows up for the bonus.