Originally Posted by
sagsal
I have been told flat out that since I had the surpass I do not qualify for the ascend - I argued about what is (or isn't in this case) in the footnotes and they don't seem to care
By whom? A phone rep? CSRs usually aren't reliable when it comes to the sort of rules and loopholes the Flyertalk crowd navigates through. Frequent Miler had a post surmising that people who had the Surpass and cancelled in time will get the bonus. He reasoned that if Amex intended to prevent those cardholders from getting a bonus on Ascend that the T&C would have (or should have) explicitly referred to prior holders of the Ascend or the Surpass cards. Instead they just reference prior holders of "this product". That vagueness means they can interpret the two cards as either the same product or as different products, but if the average Joe sees a signup bonus offer and applies, he's going to think he's entitled to it, and Amex will be pissing a lot of unsuspecting customers (not FT types) off by telling them they aren't.