gsxsilver

Company can disregard or enforce their own t&c at their discretion. Amex is fully in their legal right to selectively enforce their own contacts.

By your own logic; if amex know if you have had any given card before, its also safe to assume you should also know if you had the card before. Is it so hard to keep track of your own stuff instead of relying/blaming on other when stuff go wrong?

dhuey

The applicant does not know if Amex is going to enforce the no-previous-card rule. Can you give me a good reason why at the time of application (submitted via a bonus offer page) Amex does not make clear that they are not going to give the applicant the bonus? Does it seem like a tricky thing to program Amex systems to do?

Troopers

Emphasis added.

Agree, the terms state 'do this and get this'...so why would Amex determine eligibility prior to application as suggested by the previous poster? How would Amex determine if applicant will 'do this' in order to 'get this'?

The application is for a credit/charge card. The application is not for the various bonus points/benefits that are provided if applicant is approved for the card and meet certain criteria. There is a difference between the two.

Troopers

Please explain why you think it's quite different? Take a black Friday like deal...one tv per person/household. How's that any different if you (and/or someone in same household) tried to buy two tv but then denied at the register? Should Best Buy screen every household prior to sending the flyers and web ads?

Is it much too ask the applicant determine his/her eligibility prior to application? Is there any company, credit card or otherwise, that determine eligibility for goods/services prior to application?

The applicant should proceed with the assumption that the T&C will be enforced. It doesn't matter if applicant doesn't know if Amex will enforce T&C. It's a weak argument to rely on but I didn't know if Amex will enforce the T&C so I applied anyway in hopes they don't enforce it. And if Amex does, it's their fault.

artgriego

I'm surprised at the Amex apologists here. The distinction between applying for a bonus and applying for a product might be small if there weren't a $450 annual fee involved. No one would apply for a $450 plat with no bonus; any targeted bonus subsequently clawed back for blanket ineligibility is a total bait-and-switch.

And let's not forget that Amex awarded everyone's 100k, listed them as 'available', gave everyone some BS runaround for months, and is now applying inconsistent logic in clawbacks. The bottom line is they didn't want to offer this deal but still wanted to make as much money as they could in fees and interchange while people worked their way to the offer.

They should have handled this in prompt fashion. They could decline applications if the bonus advertised would not apply. They could notify people of their ineligibility instead of awarding points and then taking them back. Their handling of this manner has been slimy, vindictive, and frankly beneath any reasonable standard of professionalism from a company.

Troopers

I'm certainly not an Amex apologist...I've called them out upthread. But questionable activities by cardholders is not defensible.

Also IMO, the $450 annual fee is irrelevant as it pertains to the clawback/frozen MR And, many people do pay $450 annually with no bonus after year 1.


But....

1. Not everyone's 100k was frozen/clawback
2. Amex didn't offer this deal.

dhuey

(my emphasis).

If Amex were to do the equivalent of denying the application at the register, it would say to the applicant at the time of application, "sorry, no bonus, but you're welcome to have the card without a bonus."

Using your hypo, two members of the same household buy two TVs at Best Buy, Best Buy knew they were in the same household at the time of purchase, and then a couple of months later, Best Buy demands to rescind one of the sales, citing its one-per-household provision on T&C displayed in the store. That's similar to what Amex is doing: acting like they're going to disregard a T&C provision, but asserting it much later.

Let me ask you what no one here will answer: why doesn't Amex simply program its systems to alert applicants that they are not eligible for the bonus offer they are applying for? How hard could that be?

Mountain Trader

Contract law dictates that an offer includes all the material terms of the offer, and also that if the offer is accepted and the contract sealed by performance of the accepting party, the contract is binding. Amex offered 100k if approved applicants spent $3k of non-MS spend. I don't know or have ever heard of a legal concept that would separate the bonus from the application-it's part and parcel of the contract. Amex is obviously not deciding at application time whether an applicant will meet the spend requirement; but it is promising that if he/she does, they will deliver the 100k MRs.

I disagree, however, with the proposition that Amex should declare in advance whether they are going to enforce T&Cs. Pleading that Amex allowed MS in the past will indeed wind-up like telling the officer eveyone else was speeding. If you choose to ignore T&Cs, it's at your risk.

The 'same card' issue is different as it is definitional. Here Amex' prior conduct would, I think, be relevant since applicants have to decide if they have had the 'same card' before, and they need to judge how Amex decides that given the lack of definition from Amex.

Troopers

I was simply pointing all marketing with restrictions do NOT determine eligibility prior to sending targeted material.

A more appropriate Amex-Best Buy equivalent (of your position) is:

Submitting an application = attempting to buy a tv

You want to know if one eligible for the bonus before submitting an app = you want to know if one is eligible for the tv before attempting to buy the tv.

Or how about one refund per household? Do stores/manufacturers notify consumers if they are eligible for a second refund? Should one be surprised or blame placed on the store/manufacture in failed attempts to receive a second refund?


But Amex already does that...you are NOT eligible for the bonus if you don't spend non-MS $3k in 3 months, and did not previously hold the card.

Also, if Amex did state the you are eligible for bonus, I can see a situation where an applicant was denied for the card will scream, but Amex I was eligible for the bonus so thus I was approved for the card (since without card there is no bonus). How can I eligible for the bonus but denied for card?

Troopers

Yes, the bonus is part and parcel of the contract...don't disagree. But I separate the card and the bonus, as the bonus is a secondary to the card and conditional. Without the card, there is no bonus.

Mountain Trader

I certainly can't argue with that logic.

dhuey

Maybe someone will answer the question I keep asking: why doesn't Amex tell applicants at the time they apply via a bonus offer that they will not get the bonus, however much they spend? What justification can there be for Amex to silently code the account for no bonus, and not tell the applicant that it has done so until weeks or months later?

blaz

Actually, they do. If you follow the procedure that Amex expects that is. If you start an application using the browser that you normally use to log into your account, Amex will ask you to log into your account. Once you do, there will be a banner at the top of the page that will tell you that you are not eligible for the bonus. Of course everybody here uses an incognito window instead, exactly to avoid Amex recognizing that they are an existing customer and not offering a bonus.

If you ever tried to browse Amex's card offerings without going incognito, you will notice that almost no card shows a bonus or that the bonus is much smaller than the one offered to new customers.

This setup does not cover the case where you are a former Amex customer (i.e. you no longer hold a card, but did in the past), in which case Amex will likely not tell you that you are ineligible for the bonus.

mia

The banner will be wrong. The banner is testing whether or not hold hold any American Express card based on this sentence which does not appear in the terms of the offer discussed in this thread. American Express has not cited this language in disallowing bonuses.

The relevant language is this sentence, which does appear in the terms, which has been cited (often inaccurately), but American Express does not test for this if you apply while logged in:

.

Neither Chase nor Citi notifies applicants during the online process if they are ineligible for a new account bonus based on their respective 24 month rules, but they do notify new cardholders after the fact if you know what to look for.

dhuey

I tried a churn with the personal Hawaiian Airlines card (Barclays). No dice. They sent me a letter rejecting my application via the bonus offer page, saying that I am ineligible as a previous cardholder. That's totally fair and candid on the part of Barclays.

If anyone from Amex is reading this, you could save yourself and your customers a lot of grief if you take this approach. How hard could it be to program your systems to do this?