About two months ago my wife received a pleasant surprise in the mail: a 150,000-point Platinum business card offer from Amex. We hadn’t tried out that particular card before, so we hopped on it. We weren’t expecting this offer, as my wife had just obtained an Everyday Preferred, plus she had just upgraded her Hilton card to a Surpass. So that’s effectively three offers we capitalized on in the space of a week or two.

So between that and the $20K minimum spend, it’s not too surprising Amex decided it was time for a Financial Review. What seemed to trigger it was the second charge for about $5K in the space of a week.

It was pretty annoying to have all of her accounts suspended for a few weeks, but it ended up not being that big of a deal. All you do is fax Amex an IRS form giving them permission to look at your tax filings, and then they take 5-7 business days (the official number–they took 9 business days for my wife) to make their decision. Fortunately we are not in the habit of exaggerating our income on our credit card applications, so we received an email from Amex giving us the all clear.

Apparently some people are more likely to get flagged than others. Gary Leff reports that he gets flagged every year for his business Platinum card. Which doesn’t seem like a great customer service experience, but presumably Amex knows what it’s doing here.

If you’re looking for advice on how to handle Financial Reviews, I don’t really have any, other than: (a) don’t lie about your income, and (b) don’t forget to fax in that IRS form to Amex when they ask for it.

A friend of mine took a different approach: he ignored Amex for three months, then called and threatened to cancel his card. For some reason, Amex backed down. I don’t recommend that approach, since he was perfectly content to walk away from Amex, but it is an interesting data point.

One final thing, and I’m not sure whether or not it’s related: a couple of days ago my wife received an unsolicited letter from Amex about her recently upgraded Hilton Surpass. It says, “After reviewing your account, we have decided to waive the Annual Membership Fee on your account at this time.” I have no idea why they’re waiving the annual fee, if this is something they customarily do for this product, or what, but I have no complaints.

I got one of those marketing survey emails from Amex, the one where they ask you about some new product features they’re considering for their credit cards. I was thrilled to be able to share the survey with you, my internet friends, until I saw this:

In case you can’t see that, it says, “This survey may contain information about a new product or idea that may not currently be available. Do you agree to keep any information you learn about a new product of new idea confidential and not disclose it to anyone?”

Well shoot! Those Amex lawyers appear to have outsmarted me–damn their oily hides! I’m still going to share the survey with you, but it will be heavily edited so as not to divulge proprietary corporate information Amex chooses to share with strangers it finds on the internet. I mean, I love you guys, but Amex’s legal team makes way more money than mine.

Here’s the card concept they were testing on me:

It’s an interesting concept–the combination of [redacted]% back on [redacted] and [redacted] is one that’s not currently available on the market, though keep in mind it is subject to [redacted]. Also, keep in mind you have [redacted] available on non-bonus spending.

But, that’s just my opinion. What do you guys think about this one?