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Hello all,
Some advice if possible. I’m having a few bad days of travel/credit card issues.
I signed up on 14th July for the Amex Platinum card (the really good at the time 30,000 bonus). £4000 spend in 3 months. Signed up and was approved on the 13th July.
I duly hit my spend in early October (before the 13th October) and was awarded the 30,000 reward points plus a 5,000 bonus because I got referred from my wife. Fast forward to yesterday (21/10/22). I had a flight booked with Wizz to Catania (never flown them before and will never again). I woke up at 5am for my 10am flight to discover they’ve cancelled it. No other flights available (it’s half term) so take my full refund option. I also cancel all the Airbnb bookings I had made on my Amex platinum card which get refunded today (22/10/22). I had just paid my 3rd direct debit (on the 18th OCtober) on the Platinum card taking my total payments to Amex of £4810.82 less the £575 annual fee. So In total I’d actually paid and transferred £4235.82 of valid spend to Amex. On the 22nd, my refunds got put back to my card totalling more than £400. This obviously put my lifetime spend on the card below £4000 and as such 35,000 reward points have been removed. Since I’d just paid my card, I’m now approximately £300 in credit on my account.
Spoke to Amex who insisted that there is nothing they can do. If spend gets refunded, then it takes away spend.
I have two issues with this:
1) I had the points. If I had wanted to I could have transferred them to Avios and I’m pretty sure at that point they couldn’t have just taken them back.
2) I looked at the T&CSs of the sign up deal (including the current 60,000 rewards point offer) and it says the following: “You charge £4,000 to the Card within the first three months of Cardmembership. Cardmembership for this purpose begins from the time of Card approval.” Since I’m beyond three months, how have I not complied with the Terms? I might understand if I hadn’t paid my direct debit and they were only charges against my account, but they had been subsequently paid. At what point do you draw the line. If I’d put no further spend on my card for 6 months and then had a refund, would they still have taken the rewards points away. I can find no further small print that mentions about anything after the 3 month period.
I fully understand they want to stop people putting a load of spend on a card only to refund it. However, since a refund is only credited to a card and doesn’t come back as cash, that money is still sat in their account, not mine.
I must confess, I’m surprised Amex wouldn’t give me the points back considering they provide very generous retention bonuses all the time and I’ve been a card holder for about 11 years now.
Any advice from anyone? Is this a lost cause and just chalk it up to bad luck? Or is my interpretation of the sign up T&Cs correct. Is it worth a formal complaint? Anyone had a similar experience.
Many thanks, and perhaps a warning to people who might expect a refund after a bonus period.
@Dashimus strictly speaking Amex is correct, but when this has been reported before, they can sometimes be persuaded to give you the points on a goodwill basis. The way they see it is that you didn’t actually reach the spend threshold because some of the spend prior to the 3 month deadline was refunded, even if those refunds came after the deadline. Unfortunately, you clearly didn’t expect or want these refunds that were the result of your half term being messed up by Wizz rather than trying to play the system, so you need to explain this to Amex and consider spending to take you well back over the £4k.
Thanks. I did try but they were unwilling to budge. Since the 3 months has now passed spending anymore on the card would be fruitless. I was intended to keeping the card but have a bit of a bad taste in my mouth now.
Thanks. I did try but they were unwilling to budge. Since the 3 months has now passed spending anymore on the card would be fruitless. I was intended to keeping the card but have a bit of a bad taste in my mouth now.
I understand that the three months have passed, but if you don’t spend on the card, it is hardly going to encourage them to make a goodwill gesture.
Thanks. I did try but they were unwilling to budge.
Did you contact on chat (all overseas) or phone? And if phone, do you know if you were speaking to a UK or overseas call centre?
The reason I ask is that, while in this case the rep is technically correct given the T&C, the UK based phone reps understand the UK cards better and often have more latitude to offer help than the overseas reps who often just go off a script and can’t offer personalised support (e.g. I’ve been told on chat and phone by overseas reps that something wasn’t possible, only to be transferred to a UK rep who happily helped)
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