Merging existing apple cards

This is on the an Apple page from April:

• “Existing Apple Card customers can also merge their Apple Card accounts, giving the flexibility of a higher shared credit limit while keeping the lower APR of the two accounts.3“

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-introduces-apple-card-family-enabling-people-to-share-apple-card-and-build-credit-together/

and the footnote 3 leads to the page on How to Apply… (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209257) which states the following on Footnote 4

“Each co-owner is jointly and individually responsible for all balances on the co-owned Apple Card including amounts due on the existing co-owner’s account before the accounts are merged. Each co-owner will be reported to credit bureaus as an owner on the account. In addition, co-owners will have full visibility into all account activity and each co-owner is responsible for the other co-owner’s instructions or requests. Credit reporting includes…”

We have a family sharing group. I was a participant in her group prior to getting my own card. When my own card was approved, it kicked me off of her card but we are still in the same family sharing group.

when we try to send requests to become coowners now, it says “unable to invite…” for both of us.

So we followed this and we got all the way to the combined cards and then we got an error that says

• The account status on one of your Apple Cards make you ineligible to combine accounts.

there is a balance on one of the cards. But it does not include any Apple products or financing. Could this be the issue?

We talked to Goldman Sachs and they said there was nothing on either account that made them ineligible.

There is a “pending” status on her card for an invite that still shows up after turning off Family Sharing. We have no idea what that means or how to get rid of it. We contacted Apple and the response was basically “we don’t know either.” I’m wondering if that is holding it up.

We did all of this multiple times. It did removed the pending status on my wife’s phone. When I try to add her as co-owner from my phone, there is no hanging pending notification. It still doesn’t allow us to merge.

I saw someone on Reddit was told there can be no balance at all. But in response many people stated they were able to merge cards with a balance.

Apple Support told me we cannot merge two cards and suggested I cancel my account. (This was particularly frustrating because it’s not just contrary to what everything says but bad advice.) GS still says they have no idea why it won’t work.

We both have iOS 14.7.1 and there are no instalment plans on either card.

There are only two of us. We each have our own Apple ID (but only one, as far as I know)

We talked to support before I asked the question.

We turned off Family Sharing again (removed the group from the Organizer Family Sharing phone). And then started a new Family and I sent a request for a co-owner. We got the “unable to merge” message again. We tried it again with my wife starting a new Family Sharing group as Organizer. We got the same message.

This happened before and we contacted support. The first time my wife was connected to Goldman Sachs. They said there was no problem with the account that would prevent it. The second time, we contacted Apple support. Apple told us that we cannot merge two Apple Cards and when I asked why the website says we can, they said “I don’t know.” And then suggested I cancel my card and become a co-owner on my wife’s card (which has a lower credit limit, oddly.) I mentioned the “pending” thing and they said that didn’t matter. That prompted me to post here - because the support staff seemed to know less than we did.