I used to play this IOS game called “Flight Control” where you’re sorta playing air traffic controller and moving airplanes around the screen to make them land. You just can’t make the airplanes crash into each other. It starts out easy where there’s only a handful of planes on the screen and eventually can get past 2 dozen airplanes on the screen. Anyway, my friend and I only got up to around 120-150 before we would always die. This was before “rewinds” by the way, meaning you couldn’t go back in time. Then one day, a miracle happened… for some reason, I got into the “zone” and got up to 650 airplanes. I had never broken 150 before that day, so to go from 150 to 650 was just surreal. I showed it to my friend later who was so demoralized that he stopped playing the game (I also retired after that game too.) The point of the story is that you may think you’re hitting new high scores until one day someone slaps a 650 in your face!
What does this have to do with AMEX AU’s? Well, back in late 2016, I had asked someone about some Ralph Lauren Amex Offers. At that point, I had maybe ~5 AU’s per primary AMEX card so maybe 50 or so total AMEX cards. Then a reader responds to my email and tells me had 300 Ralph Lauren offers! That just blew my mind. I asked him about it some more, and it definitely wasn’t done overnight. I think he had to do it in 5 card chunks or so. Then he says there were a few time periods where he was able to keep going and that’s how he wound up with so many. So all those rich 2017 AMEX offers like the Sam’s Club 20% and Staples and Lowe’s back then…. multiply that discount by 300. I’m pretty sure he got Tesla money with just the Sam’s deal. I had asked him if he somehow automated adding the AO’s, and the poor guy told me nope, he did it all manually. Imagine the time spend opening up 300 tabs or so and clicking around; I guess for Tesla money, you sorta put up with it.
I know in mid-late 2017, you all should remember AMEX pushing AU’s on people. Every time you called them to do something, the rep would ask if you wanted to add AU’s. Then one day, I think a reader said, “Suuuure, give me 99 of them…all in my name with a different Roman numeral as my middle name.” Lo and behold, the rep did it for him. Then some people found out you could just chat with them instead to generate 99 AU’s. Thus, for every primary AMEX card you had, you could have 99 AU’s and a total of 100 AO’s. And the odd thing was that I don’t think AMEX GAF. They only GAF when I think Staples told them to fix their shit (this will always be my belief.) Once AMEX started limiting the AO’s to one per SSN or so, it no longer made sense to have hundreds of AU’s. And that’s when the deal died.
Moral of the story – I don’t know… hogs got free Teslas while the pigs got free Hot Wheels toys?