Beginning round November 2023, AmEx started rolling out a brand new and relatively shady sort of welcome supply. As a substitute of clearly telling you what you’ll get upfront, the supply headline now reads one thing like “AS HIGH AS xxx factors.”The catch? You received’t know your precise bonus till after you fill in your data and submit the applying. Solely then—earlier than accepting the supply—will AmEx reveal the precise variety of factors you’re eligible for. At that time, you may select to simply accept or decline the supply. No arduous pull will happen except you settle for it.
Right here’s the precise phrases (utilizing the AmEx Platinum for instance):
As Excessive As 175,000 Membership Rewards® factors Welcome Supply
After you submit your utility and earlier than you settle for the Card (if you’re authorised), we’ll inform you the precise quantity of Membership Rewards®factors which you’re eligible to earn together with your Welcome Supply, which shall be an quantity as excessive as 175,000 factors. Which means the quantity of factors which you’re eligible to earn together with your Welcome Supply could also be lower than 175,000 factors. You’ll be able to earn these factors after you spend $8,000 (the “Threshold Quantity”) or extra in eligible purchases in your Platinum Card® from American Specific throughout the first 6 months of Card Membership ranging from the date your account is opened.
Since this language first appeared in late 2023, AmEx has been pushing these “AS HIGH AS” presents increasingly more. They’ve even cleaned up the wording—from the extra informal “as much as xxx” to the now standardized “AS HIGH AS xxx.”
Listed here are the primary playing cards presently that includes these imprecise presents:
- AmEx Platinum: AS HIGH AS 175k (common public supply: 80k)
- AmEx Gold: AS HIGH AS 100k (common public supply: 60k)
Prior to now, savvy customers (like lots of our readers!) may typically use incognito mode and VPNs to modify IP deal with to set off the very best welcome presents. However AmEx seemingly obtained bored with players exploiting these strategies. So now, they’ve began phasing out these incognito presents and changing them with these intentionally imprecise AS HIGH AS variants. The consequence? A naïve applicant may get triggered by the eye-catching “175k” and truly get this large bonus. In the meantime, the remainder of us “players” simply get supplied one thing laughably low.
This “AS HIGH AS” system is actually fairly disgusting. It stays to be seen whether or not mainstream candidates can even be turned away by this bait-and-switch language, and if sufficient pushback may finally make AmEx assume twice about this technique.
