“Your Account is temporarily unable to access the Referral Programme”

[AndyGWP]

I’ve gone to generate an Amex referral for someone, but getting the following error message:

“Your Account is temporarily unable to access the Referral Programme, please read our full T&Cs here for more information.”

Anyone have any thoughts? Nothing obvious springs to mind (I rarely make referrals so not sure how long this message has been kicking about). There’s nothing in the T&C’s that has been breached either 🤔

[AndyGWP]

I was trying to generate a referral link from the website – is there a way to generate from the app at all? 🙂

[Chas]

Yes. Go to the Membership icon at the bottom, then click on Invite a Friend.

[Guernsey Globetrotter]

AndyGWP wrote:

I was trying to generate a referral link from the website – is there a way to generate from the app at all? 🙂

Yes – in the App go to Account – scroll down and you should see the Invite a Friend option under the Membership heading near the foot of the screen.

[Guernsey Globetrotter]

There’s more than one way to skin the Amex app referral cat it seems!

[RK228]

AndyGWP wrote:

I’ve gone to generate an Amex referral for someone, but getting the following error message:

“Your Account is temporarily unable to access the Referral Programme, please read our full T&Cs here for more information.”

Anyone have any thoughts? Nothing obvious springs to mind (I rarely make referrals so not sure how long this message has been kicking about). There’s nothing in the T&C’s that has been breached either 🤔

On both website and app my option to refer a friend has disappeared (e.g., clicking on invite link on website says I’m “temporarily unable” and the invite button on app is just not there anymore where it was last week).

[AndyGWP]

Thanks both – something definitely unusual going on then

From the Membership icon, I just get a Rewards summary (those earned in the last 30 days), along with a “Find Tickets” and “Book Travel” option

From the Account section, I have an “account” heading and a “settings” heading – no membership heading

How odd

[babyg]

I have the same issue… “Your Account is temporarily unable to access the Referral Programme” I was about to do a referral from Plat (had a 24k referral bonus)… meh

[strickers]

+1

[polly]

Yep, we need that referral also, 24k is a nice extra.. was trying to see if anyone had screenshot the offer, with the expiry dates? Was it today or tomorrow? Have asked `Rhys, as it’s still showing on his.

[strickers]

Can’t seem to redeem points either?

[Rob]

If your account is somehow in default or in dispute, you can’t make referrals. This is in the rules.

[strickers]

Not in default or dispute?

[BuildBackBetter]

No default or dispute – both mine and P2 accounts have referrals disabled.

[degsy]

I’ve had periods before where the referral option has temporarily disappeared – never longer than a day or so though IIRC.
The 24k offer on Plat ends tomorrow I think so hopefully it’ll reappear in time

[DJ]

Got exactly the same issue as well.

Nothing in dispute, everything is in order. Certainly never self refer.

Strange!

[NorthernLass]

Gold is showing a 12k points referral offer, BAPP is currently showing nothing (usually 9k). These things, like the spend trackers and offers, disappear and reappear quite regularly IME.

[truthbetold]

I would guess you have referred too many close family and recycled each other. I have recently been unable to open new accounts for family after an agent commented on how many accounts we had had over the last 10 years.

[MattWearmouth]

+1. I don’t see the referral link in the app or online. My account is at £0. We haven’t used it since 31 aug 2022. The avios balance (Amex BA basic card) is -659 due to refunds.

I’m planning to spend £659 (no points to be collected) just to see if the retrial link comes back. I wonder if they would let me cancel the card with -ve point balance…

Ive referred my wife a number of times and vice versa but never referred ourselves. I suspect this might be the issue.

Responses from AMEX:

“We base the eligibility for our referral programme on various factors relating to individual Card Members and their account history.

This includes numerous factors affecting the Card Member profile, but we continue to monitor this over time.We automatically check the eligibility of their account at the time of login, as and when their circumstances change.

You can start using your card and once circumstances change, you will again get the option to refer”

and

“…Your Card Account’s eligibility to participate in the Referral Programme is based on your overall credit rating and other factors including your Account history with American Express.

You can start using your card, and once account will be in good standing, our team will automatically review, the option will be available to refer”

[Wally1976]

My wife and I have hit this problem… I’m guessing we’ve referred each other too many times (no other issue I can think of).

Anyone found any kind of solution? A radical change in strategy required otherwise!

[Scott]

Same issue – no referral option in the app, on the website, under offers on my Gold card, I have the enhanced 12k referral bonus, but when I click to generate the referral link I get the ‘temporarily unable to access the programme’ message.

They even emailed me the other day to promote this enhanced bonus, which seems strange if they’ve decided I don’t meet the criteria for the programme.

Also the t&c’s specifically state you must only refer close friends and family, so if they don’t want cross-referring between spouses maybe they should specify some sort of limit.

[JDB]

The terms don’t exclude self referrals, but most consider that to be a no no from US experience. It isn’t entirely surprising that Amex also doesn’t like regular cross referrals between spouses/partners as it is obvious that is not the purpose of the programme.

[DTraveller]

Just to add – same issue for me and my partner, with no referral link available or getting the same message. No self referrals, but we’ve been referring each other. Recently closed a platinum card, but had it for just over a year.

[RK228]

Rob Burgess wrote:

If your account is somehow in default or in dispute, you can’t make referrals. This is in the rules.

I have no issues with my account (have never been late with payment, never in default, etc.), but still haven’t been able to refer/invite a friend for the past few weeks.

I’ve never self-referred and only occasionally refer P2 (e.g., I referred P2 for a Nectar Amex about 10 months ago and the previous referral was probably two years before that).

I was able to get around this issue to refer P2 for Platinum as I still had an old referral link in our iOS iMessage history (I think from the Nectar referral) and this still worked. Upon P2’s acceptance, I got my referral bonus and P2 has the sweetened 65,000 welcome bonus from being referred.

[Wally1976]

I have just tried asking Amex about this on the online chat. I got the following unhelpful answers (copied and pasted including typos!):

“We have checked and its an internal factor and you can try again next month as a referring a friend is not part of cards benefits”

“Some times card members can refer sometimes they cant, so youc an check again next month”

When pressed further I then got:

“We are sorry, we have checked and referring a friend can be stopped or started for an internal reason”

“There are many factors on the basis of which card members can refer a friend, and its amex decisions to stop card members from referring a friend or not”

“We can understand your concern however are really sorry , it cant be added or manually stopped, system will start automatically for you and you will start referring a friend”

At least it sounds temporary but I’m not holding my breath!