I received a pre-approved offer from Citibank for the AA card with only $1000 minimum spend for the bonus, but the offer expires Jan 30th which is before I planned to do my next churn. When I enter the pre-approved reference number on the website, it takes me to the regular application page that has some of my info already filled in and is requiring me to complete the financial info such as employment, income, mortgage payment, etc. If I submit the app, does anyone know if they will do a hard pull if the offer is supposed to be pre-approved?

yes

Now if the pre-approval was from PenFed and offered to you while logged into your account, then the answer would be "usually no"

The pre-approval itself will be a soft inquiry from Citi, but the application review once you sign up will be a hard inquiry.

Thanks to you both for the quick response. Not sure if I'm going to do it now.

Depending on what the offer is for, it may be worth it for the hard inquiry. It sounds like your credit score is not an issue since you are preparing for your next churn.

Is it any different when the offer is:

To go with AA Visa you have with us, here is an offer to add an AA Amex for bonus miles with minimum purchase (eg, 25k for $750). Annual fee for the AA Amex will be waived as long as it's linked to your AA Visa account onine, and your AA Visa stays open and current.

Ie, it's feels halfway between a new card and an "additional" card. (But it's obviously not quite as simple as an "additional" card when it's got a different network logo on it and thus obviously a different card account on it.)

my guess is yes, especially with Citi.

I believe you're right. When they send you this additional Amex it is not an additional credit pull since it's linked to the Visa.

I am pretty sure it was a hard pull for me when I took the offer to link it to my existing AA card. I don't check my credit pulls but I believe it reset my clock for applying for the two AA cards. I applied for them , never having them before, and it had been over four months since I had applied for any other citi card and I was denied the two AA's. the only reason I can think of why I was denied is that getting the linked Amex reset the clock for another two years.

It will be a hard pull. Also, even if it weren't, a card with a recent "Date Opened" will have a negative impact on your credit as well.

That said, it's a minor impact, and 1-2 years from now, you'll be better off from having more aged credit. "Optimizing" FICO is a long-term strategy.

I'm not clear on your timing (how long had it been since you'd applied for the original "exxsiting AA card" that the offer said you could link a new card to)? Was it more than 26 months from that when you were denied the two AA's?

And was the stated reason(s) for the denials in the letter(s) they sent? (They always send you the reasons for denial in writing.)

The amex offer was linked to my citi a advantage card that I have had since 1994. I just called citi to verify. I have no other citi card and I was denied when I applied using two browsers for the Citi Plat select Advantage visa sig card and Citi Select Advantage Amex card.

The reason on the letters for both denials was "this specific offer is valid for first-time Citi/Aadvantage card members.our records indicate that you already have a Citi/Aadvantage account with us".

The ONLY reason I can think of for the denial is for a hard pull when I accepted the linking Amex offer. Otherwise, since not applying for a Citi card since 1994 I should have gotten it don't you think?

You are correct, except for the "hard pull" term. It's irrelevant to their denial whether they did a hard pull or not. A hard pull is how a pull is reflected on your credit report. It has nothing to do with internal Citi processing.

So the fact that you were denied because they treated this offer proves only that they appear* to treat this offer the same for the purpose of the AA-specific 2-year-ish clock as user-initiated offers. But it doesn't prove whether or not they do a hard pull. You can only figure that out by looking at your credit report(s). (I say "report(s)" because it's hard to always be absolutely sure which of the 3 agencies they'll do a pull from on a particular application you do. Some people always got pulled by Citi from agency X, and then all of a sudden the last app they did Citi pulled from agency Y.)

*I say "appear" because you got rejected after 4 months. So that in itself doesn't prove that your clock got reset to another 2 years, it only proves that it got reset some amount. We don't really know how these clocks work in detail (all we know about the clocks is from gathering FTers anecdotes), so we don't know whether each reset does the same amount of resetting. (And we know the clock varies for unknown reasons from one instance with one person to another instance with another person. We've seen very rare cases where someone is approved after waiting only 12 months, and we've seen occasional cases where someone is denied at 24 months and only approved at 26 months. And we've seen a lot of stuff in between. But because each person can't repeat that often, it's difficult to tell how much of this variation is from person to person and how much of it is related to something else...

Sdsearch.....sorry for goofing up and instead of replying to your response I ended up repeating it under my name. I still haven't gotten this down pat yet.
I just wanted to thank you for your thoughtful reply to my situation. As there is the possibility that my clock isn't reset for two years perhaps I'll give it another try in a few months .

i have two related questions, that i was recently wondering myself..:

pre-approved offers "cost" a hard inquiry when you take them (at least in my experience), but if you manage to apply for another citi card on the same day that you accept a pre-approved citi offer, does anyone know if this might create another potential "two-for-one" with citi in terms of counting two hard inquiries as one, separate from the various other known visa/amex AA card strategies or using the "two-browser method"?

second, does anyone know if accepting a pre-approved offer from Citi allow you to violate the 60-65day/90-95day application spacing rules that Citi applications are generally subject to? in other words, if i would normally have to wait two months to apply for more citi cards, would accepting a pre-approved offer allow me to wait only one month since my last application? i suspect it's unlikely that someone would have a still-valid pre-approval offer within the app spacing window period, but would be grateful if anyone has any experiences they can share..