WOW! Amex Business Gold Cardmember is Missing 450K Points
I have often seen issues with charges not coding correctly for American Express credit cards. You expect a charge to be in a bonus category, but instead you get only one point per dollar spend. One such issue though, has left one cardmember 450,000 Membership Rewards points short.
He detailed his case on reddit. He spent $150,000 within three weeks on Facebook Advertising, using his Amex Business Gold Card. This card gives you 4X Membership Rewards® points on the 2 categories where your business spent the most each billing cycle. One of those categories is U.S. purchases for advertising in select media.
But there’s an issue. The charges show as billed in Ireland. So American Express sees this as purchases from a foreign company and is denying the 4X earning, giving just 1X instead.
Facebook terms say that “if you are a resident of or have your principal place of business in a country other than the U.S. or Canada, these Payments Terms are between you and Facebook Payments International Ltd., a private limited company in the Republic of Ireland.” But the cardmember says that he is a US citizen, resident in the US and with a US LLC based in Texas.
Facebook has been in the news regarding these issues in the past. I tested a $1 charge myself today for Facebook ads and it shows as “Facebook Advertising USA” (hopefully Shawn reimburses me business expenses).
Conclusion
There’s not much that American Express can do in this case in my opinion. Hopefully he gets this resolved from Facebook.
I wouldn’t expect such charged to show up in Ireland. But this is a reminder to always check how your charges are coding. That’s if you expect them to earn bonus points and even more so when we’re talking about large recurring amounts.
Let us know if you have had any similar issues with American Express.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card is the old king of travel rewards cards. Right now
bonus_miles_full
Learn more about this card and its features!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Stop all spend on it like I did until it gets cleared and hit that CIP!
Amex cancelled every one of my cards over a payment error. I lost over 300K MRs, about 15K Marriott points and assorted Delta and Hilton points. Luckily I’d transferred 150K MRs to Air France, or it would have been more than 450K.
They suck.
Amex approves a platinum charge card only to cancel my card 2 days later
Happens alot with Foreign Carriers where you book directly with them eg BA Avios the charge ends up at times as a UK charge if your CC isnt free from FOREX you will be dinged. Yet I booked via US Exec Club makes no difference , good thing the CC I used was No FOREX fee