The Milenomics Podcast Network

Checking in Episode 23: Amex & Southeast Asia w/CF Frost

Added 2023-03-20 23:13:32 +0000 UTC

2:45 Amex Referrals: +5x on Grocery up to $25,000

“Lose” primary Personal Gold card that’s lost ability to refer, once that’s healed - refer, apply, recon, approve (strange “acceptance” process)
How are you playing it?
Honeypot?

12:00 Loss of Referability from Personal Cards

12:45 Ambiguous Pop-Up When Applying

Seeing more reports of this type for cards people have never had:
<name>, You are not eligible to receive the welcome offer. Would you like to proceed?”

17:00 Amex Min Spend: What Counts, What Doesn’t

I know to “watch out for refunds” but the way Amex tallies up spend is a little tricky because it combines payments with credits (which include both refunds and statement credits)
Annual Fee? No
Spend that triggered benefit credits? Yes
Does Amex do that strange thing where it tracks the transaction that put you over the spend threshold and if it gets refunded it causes problems?

20:45 Russ asks: “Any way to find what MCC Amex will see? I've used awardwallet's tools and BoA Biz cards to get MCCs for years, but they're occasionally different with Amex and it can take a whole statement cycle to find out whether or not a charge was bonused.”

23:10 The Gamblord asks: “Best ways to play the Hilton personal/business game. Upgrade/downgrade Aspire->Surpass, hit 15k spend then cancel until the next year? Same with biz?”

27:25 Roberto asks: “Is there any volume of monthly MS with Amex that increases risk of a FR? So far I've been staying under $20k/month/card and $30k/month across cards, but curious if there are any rules of thumb in this area.”

32:55 What’s good about Amex we haven’t asked about? Any Amex blind spots?