Mr. Talbs

Thanks! I'm really excited for this new card - the invite took me by surprise.

I'll round out 2021 with about $2M to $2.2M across personal and business cards. In the previous two years, I had focused my spending on my Chase Sapphire Reserve so my Amex spend was only like $250k or so, but then I figured out how to pre-fund my amex to take down giant purchases for business (Chase doesn't let you). My biggest single transaction this year was $600k and another for about $400k, both by pre-funding the card.

747FC

Anyone go through the trouble of weighing the new cards?

GundamWing01

nice work. please clarify a few things. you had only spent a total of $2MM across multiple cards, personal/business? and still got the invite when the prior 2 years were limited to only $250k? i dont get it. this is a very interesting DP. especially when many RMs insist $5-$10MM on biz plat alone. maybe things have changed for this year?

also, what do you mean, "pre-fund"? you wired $1MM to your amex cards prior to purchase? so you had a huge credit balance?

anyone know whats the new going rate for personal plat spend for cent invite?

mia

I think there is a geographic element. That kind of spend might be required in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago et. al., but if Mr. Talbs' business is in a smaller market the criteria may be different.

SteveT

JustA Millennial did a YT video detailing his spend before he got the personal invite:

david55

I know you all take this much more seriously than I....but from reading the posts it looks like my $3K a year spend on my Schwab Plat and living on a small island in the Puget Sound is probably not going to earn me an invite.

GundamWing01

awesome video on the spend details for personal cent. thank you for making that. are you willing to share any of the spend details by category and percentage? for example X% on lux items, travel, airfare, online merchants, daily living etc. this seems to be a key factor as well.

very true. i just dont know how much of geo factors into the selection process. i know it does for UA GServices, but for amex cent, i believe spending category plays a greater role vs geo. and obviously personal vs business is totally different.

thank you so much. this was super helpful.

travel305

When you say portal do you mean the form located at americanexpress dot com/en-us/account/centurion/login ?


Curious, because I have been a member since 1982 and would like to request - not sure if there is a different portal that you are speaking of.

bcs36

..
Go to centurion.com and click 'Interested in Centurion...'

travel305

Yeah, that redirects to the link I posted. I wasn't sure if there was another portal. Guess not.

Mr. Talbs

Thanks. I'm in a relatively small market in the Pacific Northwest. No doubt I'd be no one special if I were in NYC or LA.

I'm a relatively new business card holder. I had been using my personal amex for business reimbursables for most of the year and racked up about $1.6M on my personal card. I eventually started an LLC and got a card tied to that entity. I'll have about $500k between that biz gold and now my biz centurion by the end of the year, but I've also moved a bunch of spend off my personal CSR over to amex now as well.

And by pre-funding, you're correct. In anticipation for large purchases, I wire funds from my margin account to amex ahead of time to fund those purchases. Otherwise, they'll only let me charge about $250k at a time. At one point, I had pre-funded $600k on margin, then spent $500k on credit beyond that before getting reimbursed. So I was effectively out over my skis for $1.1M for a minute there. I was a little nervous but it was ultimately very low risk. I had it all paid off within the cycle.

I was on the phone with them and in a "by the way" kind of way, I said I was interested in the black card. They connected me to the Centurion desk and I chatted with them for a minute. Nothing committal. Evidently, when they reviewed my spend, they realized it was mostly business related anyway, so they offered me the business version of the card. It makes more sense than the personal version.

Also, if it's relevant, I've been with Amex for more than a decade and have never missed a full payment. 830+ FICO. In all honesty, I'm pretty surprised I got an invite given prior year spends were on personal cards only.

qnxr01

I'm spending about $1m/year on my Amex Plat. Also probably another $100k+/year through Amex Travel. Requested an invite late last year through the site and even tried to speak to an account manager, got the runaround. One of my colleagues is a former Amex guy, and tells me that in Los Angeles, $1m/year doesn't cut it, because they have geographic requirements in areas like SF, NY, and LA. If you're living in a rich zip code, the annual spend required for an invite apparently is much higher. I've heard like $1.5m-$1.7m/year in LA. So while there's people getting invites with $300k/year of spend across the country -- it's not in those geographies. Which is really crappy and disappointing, to be honest. Especially when the norm today is like 90 minute hold times for Platinum Concierge. Imagine spending seven figures a year on a card where Amex is taking like 3% cut of the transactions as profit, and the best they can offer you is an hour and a half on hold. It's pretty nuts how I spend next to nothing on my Chase Sapphire Reserve and get better customer service from them, because on their sliding scale metric of being exclusive within geographies, my tiny million-per-year spend doesn't qualify me for anything other than their rapidly-declining customer service for Platinum, because of my zip code. Even though, I'm objectively a more valuable customer than the Centurion card holder spending $250k-$350k a year in Wyoming. But it's part of the "mystique" .

EWRFlyerNJ

I don’t see why NYC metro would have lower requirements than LA and I was running 650/700 a year in the three years before I got mine (this summer). I don’t think your info is entirely accurate.

SteveT

What has your spend been for the last couple of years. Was it on a personal or business card?

qnxr01

About $1m a year for past 3 years on personal card. This year I'm already at $1m YTD.