Most credit card issuers allow you to reopen a closed credit card within a certain time period. In some cases American Express has allowed cardholders to reopen a card that has been closed for up to a year. Unfortunately it looks like American Express is now charging a $25 fee to reopen a closed card, these reopenings are also subject to approval and can take up to 10 business days to process.
Hat tip to reader Mark R
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Data point on this as of April 2021... I closed an account in order to get approved for a new application. But when the non-charge card limit recently was relaxed from 4 back to 5, I called in to have the closed account reopened. They did so immediately with no fee. It was closed for ~37 days.
I didn’t have to Pay a fee to upgrade To the Aspire after I downgraded a month ago. Not only that but the CSR gave me $335 in credit for seat upgrade fees from last year on AS. Def worth the call.
I applied for my 6th revolver and amex wanted me to close one card to be approved so I did then I hung up and called to request my "recently" closed card to be re-opened and the agent processed it instantly. At the time the terms said a $25 fee will be charged for account re-opening but that never happened. Maybe the system didn't catch it since it happened so quickly and that was back in November.
Hi, can you let me know if the card you reinstate still report under the same account/card in your credit report ? looks like the reinstate card number will change.
Let's all raise a big stink about it here. Since there is no doubt they read these forums, maybe they'll relent
I had no idea American Express let you reopen closed accounts. I just tried to do this with my Everyday card that I regretfully closed in January with no success. The support representative told me that because 3 months had passed there was nothing he could do. Maybe if it had been one of their "Big Boy" cards my success rate would have increased.
they usually only give you 30 day regardless of card
AMEX is quickly losing its customer-first reputation. Who is left on this front? Discover?
Nah, Amex is getting smarter about what customers they want to keep vs customers they don't care about losing.
Wow. Did not see that coming. If anything they should offer $25 credit to reopen.
... then everyone would close and reopen to save $25 ...
When you re-open a closed card, is there a new hard credit pull? Will it show up as a new account opening on your credit report for 5/24 purposes etc?
Its not a hard pull. Moreover if you have another card from Amex and you are an existing customer, they only do a soft pull for new card applications too. So this should not be any different.
Makes sense. The real question is, will it show up on your credit report as a new account, like a new account opening, even if it's a soft pull. Matters for 5/24 purposes.
Lie Steve said above, The account number, opened date, etc remains the same. That means that, as long as the reopened card is 24 months old, there is no impact on 5/24.
This is what I'm wanting to know too.
Not sure about a hard pull, but reopening a closed account is not a new account. The account number, opened date, etc remains the same.
is it true that you have to wait 13 months between retention offers or is it every other year? just paid my AF with it being due on my platinum tomorrow. Will call in next week to see if i have a retention offer since it should be month 13. I did get one last year.
needs to be at least 13months from the exact day you got last year retention offer, so i hope you wrote it down or its in your email. Most people call after the annual fee hits so that means doing it every other year.
I suspect this may be to deter people from cancelling with the hope of receiving a retention offer, and then reinstating the card if an offer isn't given.
But why would anyone need to do this? If a retention offer isn't given, you can just not cancel. You find out if you get an offer before you actually have to cancel.
Chase makes you wait until you actually confirm you want to cancel to possibly get the retention offer (in most cases at least), Amex might do the same. They have to know some people call for the offers with zero intent to cancel.
You mean the people that call in to cancel and change their mind 3 times? On every card? Every year?
You're saying after you confirm you ARE cancelling after all the T&C are read etc- they suddenly THEN say, wait, we aren't cancelling you yet- how about 25k points??
lol maybe it'll turn into "OK your card is canceled now - it'll usually cost you $25 to reinstate it, but if you do it now, we'll waive the fee!"
Correct. Chase does this, and I would not be surprised to see Amex follow (especially now), which is where I could see this fee being a bit of a safeguard to prevent abuse (otherwise there is no penalty for cancelling and reinstating that I'm aware of).
I saw some post to that effect - if you call Chase to ask about cancelling, the CSR may not see any retention offers for you, until they actually click the button to cancel - in which case either they'll tell you about an offer, or there will be no offer and your account will already be closed. Thought I read it here, but maybe a link from one of the weekly recap posts.
I actually would prefer them dropping retention offers and enhancing the product instead.