I understand that. But it’s (probably) not a legal requirement. If it was “required” AmEx would do a hard pull for existing customers. My thought (fantasy) is that the many issuers I referred to would only do a hard pull when necessary and it’s certainly not necessary when an application is declined without looking at a credit report.

And regardless of the purpose, it’s still infuriating and also one aspect of the process that AmEx does better than anyone else. No hard pull for existing customers is a very user friendly procedure. Pop-up jail is annoying but at least we’re informed prior to the optional additional insult of an unnecessary hard pull so another way AmEx is more user friendly.