DPB

You should try for the third card in a few months if you really want it. I opened a personal AMEX Gold and a Business AMEX Gold back in November. One HP. A couple weeks ago I decided I wanted the Business Platinum instead of Business Gold. I applied for a new account so I could take advantage of the SUB. SP for that app. The AMEX rep said they do a SP monthly for account maintenance and use that if you apply for another card. While mine are their charge cards, I’d assume that their credit products would be the same way.

Almost 10 years ago when I had to go through BK, I had the same experience. I’d get a call claiming that it was a CA, but they’d want to verify info the same info. Some even asked for my SSN. I’m sure most, maybe even all, of the calls were legit, but I’d never give that info to someone calling me. Instead, tell them that you won’t verify any information over the phone. Also tell them that any correspondence will need to be done in writing through the mail. Remember, if it’s in writing you have proof. If they tell you something untrue over the phone it’ll be near impossible to prove later on. And if you do get something in writing, as hege said, don’t call them. Put everything in writing and keep a copy of everything you send.

True to their word, AMEX indeed overnighted the card. UPS alerted me to an incoming package on Friday. The card was delivered around 2pm today. Immediately activated it. Then charged $6,500 two minutes later. Then placed another order for $5,500. These were purchases that I had to make anyway, but I decided to wait for the new card. 1.5 points per dollar spent, plus I hit the first half of the SUB (50k points for $10k spend). 68k points in 30 minutes, not too bad. Now I have 89 days left to spend roughly $8k to get another 10k in bonus points. Chances are I’ll have that done towards the beginning of next week as I have another order that I need to place. I have a trip to Europe planned for later this year, so I’ll probbly go ahead and get Global Entry started this week since I have some free time.

And Business Platinum it is. I applied online and was instantly denied. My fault though. I’m an idiot and I let balances on my other cards report last month. Two of the cards had large purchases that made the UTIL a bit high (although PIF when statement was sent). I called and asked for a recon and they approved the app. And since I already have other AMEX cards they didn’t even do a HP! They are even overnighting the card to me.

AMEX Business charge cards - (877) 399-3083 I applied for a Business Platinum card and was declined by their automated system. Called the above number to ask about recon. I didn’t directly get an underwriter. But the lady on the phone took the information and said she’d get it to the UW department. I didn’t believe her, but she called back just a couple minutes later to say she spoke to the UW team and I was approved. So this should work for AMEX Biz charge cards. Not sure about their other cards though.

AMEX Business Platinum. And no HP since I already have a couple cards with them.

I checked the fine print on the terms of the Business Platinum Card. It says, “The annual fee for Additional Cards is $175 for up to 3 Additional Cards. The annual fee for the 4th or more Additional Cards is $175 for each Card. The annual fee for an Additional Gold Card is $0.” But nowhere (at least that I can find) does it say if I could get the rewards offered by the Gold Card. Perhaps it’s worth a call to AMEX to find out. But my preference is still to upgrade the business card, which won’t get me the 4x categories that I get on my personal card. If I’m going to upgrade my personal card, I want to wait for another 100k or higher SUB offer.

About four or five months ago I got an AMEX Business Gold Card and a personal Gold Card. At the time I thought this was the correct set of cards for me. I don’t ever travel for business, so I chose the Business Gold Card because the 4x rewards points sounded far more appealing than the travel related perks of the Platinum Card. What I didn’t realize then was that the 4x rewards points were for only certain categories. And after analyzing my spending since I got the card I have found that less than 1% of my purchases qualify for the 4x categories. For my personal card, I think that the Gold Card is still the correct choice. The extra rewards points and statement credits for things like groceries and dining make this card more appealing to me than the Platinum Card. I am going to be traveling a bit more over the next few years. But it will all be personal, not business travel. So now some of the benefits of the Platinum Card are appealing to me. I could use some advice on what to do. AMEX has a 75,000 SUB for the Business Platinum right now - $20k spend in three months, which would easily be covered in one month. Also, 1.5 points for purchases over $5,000 would be very nice since a large percentage of my purchases would qualify. I could then use this card to book any personal travel and for access to lounges plus the other benefits that I want. Since I am the only employee of my business (everyone else I pay is a subcontractor) it would be easy enough to do the accounting. And I’d probably only do this for travel a few times per year. It also seems to me that regardless of personal travel I should probably switch to the Business Platinum Card for the 1.5 points per dollar on large purchases. Or would it be better to just get a personal Platinum Card for travel? I believe the current SUB is only 60,000 points. The AMEX website doesn’t show me, and only gives me the option to request an upgrade to the Platinum Card. If I end up going this route I’d like to wait until they offer a 100,000 point SUB again - assuming that is even an option. The downside is that I would lose out on the 4x categories that I currently get on my personal Gold Card. Also, I vaguely remember reading here that AMEX doesn’t do a HP if you already have one of their cards. Is this true, or am I mistaken? I don’t really care if they do a HP, but not having another INQ would be preferable. Thanks in advance for the help and advice.

Thanks for updating this Marv. Here is my contribution from the old thread that wasn’t updated: Citi: 866-606-2787 Doesn’t work. 800-695-5171 Confirmed. Rings directly to a live person (US based) for New Accounts UW/Recon.

I searched, but wasn’t able to find an answer. I have a BK7 that was discharged 4/11. That is the only negative item on my reports. I’d like to get it removed, but I sill live at the same address that I did when I filed the BK. Is there a variation of the method described here, or maybe another method, that would let me get the BK removed? Or am I stuck with it until 2021?

In this case, OC is not the hospital. OC is the doctors association for the doctor side of the ER visits. The hospital had initially sent me to collections, but when I found out I called and made it very clear that they were wrong and would be sued. So they removed the collections immediately. The doctors association has been the one that’s refused to to the right thing. The CA has a direct assignment from the OC (doctors association). That part I was able to confirm. It’s one of the very few parts of the letters that they (the OC) actually provided a response to. The hospital would be included in any legal action because it was their billing department that messed up originally. And because of the errors by the hospital I am now being balance billed by an out-of-network provider that was chosen by the in-network hospital for three ER visits. Neither the CA or OC care that this isn’t legal in Florida. And none of the government entities that are supposed to be providing oversight and regulation care either. The more I think about it, the more angry I get. I was able to get the financing I needed recently, but only because I chose new creditors based on where they pull credit. But I’m annoyed that I had to do it that way. Other things I’ve just paid for in cash rather than deal with having to pay higher interest rates. I’m glad hat I’m in a position to be able to make a decision like that. But after thinking about it overnight, I completely agree that a lawsuit is in order whether they remove these collections from my EX report or not. Many people wouldn’t be able to decide to just pay cash for some large purchases, so I definitely agree that action needs to be taken to prevent this scenario from happening to someone else. Adding the hospital to any legal action may not yield any financial penalty for them, but it will cost them in attorney fees. Plus any negative publicity for a large charity hospital network - which constantly points out their charitable contributions locally - could help them decide to audit their billing department and practices. Hopefully that could help prevent this issue for others. And if it’s enough bad publicity, my hope is that it would make them decide to pressure the doctors association to stop their illegal billing practices and maybe even no longer use this CA. Or even better, drop this doctors association and find one that is honest. I’m going out of town in a couple days, so im focused on getting ready for that. But I’ll be picking this up again with the attorney once I get back.

Valid point. So I’ll wait a little longer see if the collections get deleted from EX also. Then I’ll have the attorney go after them. He’ll just have to adjust the letters to remove the parts about removing the accounts from my credit files (assuming that they get deleted from EX). I’ll ask him if he thinks it’s a good idea to add something forbidding the OC and CA from reporting these ever again. I doubt that the CA would care if I’m awarded a judgement. But maybe if the hospital and OC are included they will drop that CA entirely. I’m sure they’d care a lot about losing that account.

Update: I decided to hold off on contacting an attorney until after the first of the year. I had to refinance two auto loans and I was also going to be getting new financing on a third vehicle. After some research I found out that the banks I was planning to use all pull EQ, and since that report wasn’t showing the collections, my score was well above what I needed to secure the lowest offered interest rate. I thought that there was a possibility that if I filed suit, the CA would notice that the collections weren’t on EQ and then try and add them to that report. In my mind it wasn’t worth the risk. A couple weeks ago I spoke with an attorney that’s a family friend. He said I’d have a good case, but I’d need to include everyone involved in the lawsuit - OC, CA, EX, TU, and the hospital (since their billing department didn’t give my insurance info to the OC which is what started this whole mess). The initial demand letters have all been drawn up as of last week. The plan was to send them out this week. Well, about 10 minutes ago I got alerts from Credit Karma and MyFICO that all three collections were removed from my TU report. My score jumped 40 points! I think I’m going to call the attorney and have him wait on sending all the demand letters. Maybe the accounts will soon be removed from EX too and I won’t have to spend any more time on this BS. I’m sure I could probably collect something for damages at this point, but if everything just goes away and this saga ends and I don’t have to deal with it anymore, fine by me.

Thanks for the input everyone. I’ll definitely follow up with MyFICO and see if I can get more info. I checked all my accounts immediately after seeing the alert, and everything is good there. No unknown charges and the balances are exactly what they should be. I also checked today, and the security freezes on all three CRAs are still in effect. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me to do that immediately when I got the alerts. I’ve been working on repairing my credit over the past few years, which has been quite a pain. So this probably just had me overthinking things a bit.

It shows a drop of 2 points. I’m just concerned that it says I owe $86k on some account that I’ve never seen before. If there was an actual chance, wouldn’t I also get an alert from CreditKarma? Could this just be a glitch from MyFICO? I really hope it’s just a glitch.