When you’ve got two or more of the same Amex card managed under a single online account, managing benefits like airline incidentals and activating Saks/Dell credits can be wonky.
Amex absolutely allows us to have multiple versions of the same card. But it seems to stress a scenario their online system doesn’t handle well.
What happens for me, since I have two or more of the same card under a single Amex online account, is that when I go to select an airline or activate Saks/Dell credits is that the card I’m interacting with switches back to the first card of that type. This can lead to an important malfunction because while it appears that I’ve already selected an airline or activated Saks/Dell credits for the new card, I’m actually viewing the first card’s selections.
As far as I’ve seen, this can happen on any card that has a benefit that needs to be activated. Platinum cards, Personal Gold cards, and Hilton Aspire cards for example.
The chances of this happening heightened recently since Amex released “Green Star” referrals with no lifetime language. I say that because in some cases it can make sense to have multiple versions of the same card since the offers skirt lifetime language. Some of the cards included in the Green Star referrals can be worth having more than once concurrently. We discussed this at length in Episode 49 of the podcast.
A Workaround
If this happens, try unlinking the new card from your main Amex online account. Go to Account Services->Card Management->Remove Card from Online Management
You should then be able to create a new online account for the new card(s), and select your benefits.
After doing this, you should be able to unlink your account and re-associate it with your original/main Amex online account and the benefits should remain intact.
I ran into quite a bit of additional wonkiness while trying to perform this unlinking/re-linking. Sometimes it goes through without incident, sometimes it’s locked my account out and told me to call.
Or, you could just call Amex straight away and they should be able to process the selections for over the phone.
Bottom Line
Amex’s online interface is generally above average. But when you’ve got multiple versions of a single card it seems to cause issues.
Hopefully this helps if others out there are running into the same or similar issues.
Great stuff, thanks Robert. Or Bob as Joe and Trevor call you.
With multiple of the same card, are you getting the WB on every app?
Took me a while to figure out what “WB” means in this context. Welcome Bonus, right?
If so: It depends. Situations have recently come up where there are targeted offers with no lifetime language. In those cases, yes one can get the welcome bonus again.
But other times the benefits (or bonused spend) associated with the card + a spousal referral is worth enough to me that I’d get the card again even without a welcome bonus.
Yes, precisely! Thank you! 🙂