Thread: Does an upgrade do a hard pull?

I've looked at several old threads about this but there seems to be differing answers.

I just crossed my 13-month point with the green card and was pre-approved for the Premier Rewards Gold (that's been my goal all along). I upgraded online and all it asked me was to verify the security number on the front of my Green Card. That was it, it said I was approved and I'd have the card in 7-10 business days. It never asked for permission to check credit or indicated it was going to do so.

I'm not bothered by them checking, it just seemed odd that there was no mention of it.

UPDATE: Yes, I checked all the fine print along the way. The only other thing that was presented for me to accept was the new cardmember agreement which was very short and made no mention of a credit check.

IME if you asked for the upgrade it most likely will be a hard pull. If it was a automatic upgrade by the creditor than i would be a soft pull. It sounds like you will only be charged with a soft. Amex is softing you all the time so they probably saw something they like in your profile.

I upgraded a couple of weeks ago and there was definitely NO HARD PULL. Like you said they just wanted sec code verification.

99.9% of the time, Soft pull.
Good Luck

no all an upgrade is going from a lower level card to a higher level card while keeping the same account number.

example you have a green, just call them to tell them you want a gold, gold rewards or platinum. keeping the same account number.

it's a higher level card with the same account number, it doesn't get reported to the credit reports.