Congratulations , hope you get your bonus quickly and easily, would also be a good prognosticator for the rest of us. Please update us about receiving your bonus.

BREAK – Rant On

AmEx (SUBs) cannot be trusted, a caveat emptor attitude is most definitely appropriate. There are many reports of denied or delayed bonuses, messed up annual fees, arbitrary resetting of 7 year itch lifetime and clueless AmEx agents giving patently erroneous information. All of that is worse with upgrade offers (compared to applications and SUBs).

My most galling experience was about 4 years ago; Delta personal card, 3.5 years after closing Delta personal card, prior to “no bonus” pop-ups, targeted, NLL, instant approval, offer confirmed by phone after card receipt, quickly met minimum spend. No bonus. Certified letter to AmEx CEO which was followed-up by the AmEx Executive Resolution Team (top of AmEx Customer Service as far as I know) and also contacting the AmEx Twitter team (at the time supposedly the go-to team) a few months later … bupkis.

A big part of this problem is that AmEx reps are (probably) mostly reading from a script. When we ask “is this promotion attached to my card” they’re simply saying that the promotion is attached to those types of cards. They either cannot or do not see, or will not share with us, the exact specific details of our individual account and the nonsense reasons why the promotion does not apply to our specific individual account. This is America, businesses can lie and contradict themselves in order to rip us off as they please. Bait and switch, false advertising, out of stock, doesn’t apply on even numbered days, whatever. It’s all just a bunch of BS to transfer our money from our wallets to their CEO and shareholders’ wallets.

Rant off.