need advice on applying for Amex?

rizzla

first of all let me congratulate martin for the work done on this website. It's a great website, great forum. The users here seem so friendly and i like the forward approach by many to help each other out. What martin has created is a small step towards building an online community that wants to help each other out and not be in competition with each other and hopefully we can stretch this to the wider local community offline.

now my question is regarding the information credit card companies have on you before deciding on whether to give you a card or not.

I want to apply for the Amex Platinum card. My question is what do they take into consideration before issuing me with one?

Currently I have

Barclaycard - 3 yrs - £500 limit - £0 balance
CapitalOne Platinum - 3 yrs - £5000 limit - £92 balance
Mint Classic- 1 month - £2250 limit - £0 balance

I have a clean credit record. no blacklisted, bankruptcy, ccjs..etc I have missed payments by a day or two and incurred charges but this was always due to payment reaching them late thanks to non working days in between.

When I applied for Mint last month they approved me instantly online. I've had the card for a month now and am looking forward to benefit from the 0% free period.

I want to go for the Amex.

1) is it a good idea to apply for it 1 month after applying for Mint?

2) would i be in a better position if I piled some balance on my Mint card before applying for the Amex?

so that Amex will be "greedy" for the balance on my Mint card and hope that if they issue me with a card i'll transfer the balance over

3) do they have access to the details i supplied for my application to Mint? (income..etc)?

I'm earning £20,000 with my daytime job. I have now a saturday job which boosts my salary to £22,500.

If I specify the above in my Amex application will they suspect that I'm boosting my income in order to fall just above the £20,000 minimum income requirement for their platinum card?

4) should I be on the safe side and go for a Amex Blue card instead, which ask for a minimum of £12,000 salary?

I may sound paranoid. But I don't want my application to be rejected as I believe this information would be available on my credit record for other lenders to see.

Thank you in advance for the help!

JohalaReewi

If you are rejected, this will not appear on your credit record. The only thing that will show up is that American Express did a search (if they do one). So you could apply for a platinum first, and if rejected go for the blue. Or you might want to look at a moneyback VISA card (like the Conran) instead of the blue.

Don't worry about having just applied for a Mint card. They are probably more worried about CCJs and defaults. They won't have access to your Mint records (not via a credit check anyway) and your annual income includes all sources so don't worry about including Saturday jobs. At the end of the day Amex will either say yes or no.

If you do go for the platinum, you can get a reward from Greasy Palm if you do it via the link on their website (http://www.greasypalm.co.uk). Other reward sites may also have an offer (looks like Quidco don't though ).

If you want to know the kind of thing that your credit records hold, you can make a request for your credit files from the credit companies (cost £2) although they may try to tempt you to sign up for a more expensive solution.

http://www.uk.experian.com/consumer/index.html?order

https://www.econsumer.equifax.co.uk/consumer/uk/sitepage.ehtml?forward=gb_elearning_credit14