80,000 (out of 120,000) amex points refused

ohanssen wrote:

During this, he also said that the card offer started on the date which matches with when I applied for the card, rather than when I got the card and activated it

I believe that’s correct. The current offer on the Amex page is “Earn 50,000 Membership Rewards® points when you spend £6,000 in your first three months of Cardmembership” – your card membership starts on the day you are accepted as a card member.

When you click on the little ‘i’ for information, it expands to say this:

“New Cardmember Offer – 50,000 Membership Rewards® bonus points: ​
The 50,000 Membership Rewards bonus points will be awarded onto your Account if you are eligible for the new Cardmember offer, once you have been approved and you have spent and charged £6,000 within the first three months of Cardmembership. Cardmembership begins from Card approval. All introductory offers are subject to change and can be withdrawn at any time. Please note it can take up to one month for bonus points to be awarded to your Account once you have met the required spend.”

ohanssen wrote:

but anyone have any advice on getting them to change their minds about the date cutoff?

You can see if you can find a nice agent who might give you some pity points, but the cut-off date is as advertised. It is usually spend X amount within first N months of card membership, which starts on the date you are accepted.

It is unlikely that Amex’s systems are set up for starting offers when you activate the card.

You could in theory take a year to activate the card for example (although I don’t know how that would work in practice).