I self-referred from Gold to Platinum for myself and it worked back in August. I got the referral bonus almost immediately.
The 50K on the other hand, is still in limbo. I hit $1K spending even before the first statement was issued, and now I'm past my 2nd statement and still haven't got the bonus.
It's unusual for AMEX, since during every churn I've done with them, I got the bonus points immediately when I passed the spending threshold.