Amex Offers Duplication Ending?
Earlier today I wrote a post about why Amex Offers automation has stopped working for the most part on Twitter. In addition to those automation problems, others have surfaced today as well. For example, people are having issues getting all of their accounts to sync with the Jet.com offer. Some accounts don’t receive responses to their tweets and others are told they are already enrolled even when they are not.
A couple of hours ago Chuck at Doctor of credit wrote about this phenomenon. He believes the “axe is falling” on being able to register offers on multiple cards. He now believes that Amex is running each Twitter account through a server and comparing names and information relating to each card. Here are the rules as he believes them to be (quoted directly from his post):
- This limitation is tied to the name on the card, not the SSN. If you have one card with the name Jacob and another your nickname Jack, it will probably allow one for each name, despite the fact that they are both under your SSN. (Note, however, if you just drop one letter from the name it will be considered one name, e.g. Jacob and Jacb.)
- The limitation is across all of your cards, including AU cards under someone else’s primary. For example, if you saved the offer on a card that you are primary, and then you try saving it on your AU card under your wife’s primary account, it won’t work. And the same thing if you do the reverse order; it will only save on the first one.
- If you have a card with the name Jacob and an Authorized User (AU) card under the same account with your SSN and the name Jack, it will go through once for Jacob and once for Jack.
- Serve cards and subaccount are included in this limitation. If you have an Amex card with your name and a Serve account or even a Serve subaccount under the same name at the same address, it won’t allow the offer on both.
- The limitation includes third-party Amex cards as well, such as Fidelity and BBVA. If you already saved the offer on one Amex card, you won’t be able to save it on your third-party Amex card.
- My experience indicates that even across multiple addresses you can not save the offer to two cards in the same name and same SSN. Although different spellings of the same name with the same SSN are allowed, as note above, same name and same SSN seems to be limited even across separate addresses.
- Changing IP addresses does not appear to help, but I haven’t tested this enough to say for certain.
Is This True?
First off, let me say something is definitely up, but I am not as sure as Chuck as to exactly what is going on. He could definitely be right and I wouldn’t be surprised if he is. Before I jump to conclusions though let me share with you a data point from my own personal experience, because I think it runs counter to what a lot of people are seeing.
This morning I was able to load ALL of my cards successfully via Twitter with the hashtag #AmexJet. I didn’t have any of the problems others had loading this offer, however I sent my tweets at about 3am, so that could explain it. That information alone means very little, but I have one more thing to add to the discussion.
A couple of weeks ago I had the same problem people have been running into today when I tried to load the Dunkin’ Donuts offer. Some of the times I wouldn’t receive a response to my tweet and other times I received a response saying my account was already registered. In other words, the same accounts that worked perfectly today had this issue a few weeks ago.
A Possible Explanation
As I have mentioned a couple of times, Chuck’s explanation very well could be possible and I am not out to disprove it. (Although I am certainly praying it is wrong.) Even though he presents one possibility, someone has presented another. The developer of @Offersbot has a theory as to what is causing the delayed replies from Amex and the registration issues.
@Drofcredit so the issue with delayed tweets is that the Amex offers application is being write limited by Twitter.
— OffersBot (@OffersBot) December 11, 2015
@Drofcredit we also believe this is the cause of the registration issues.
— OffersBot (@OffersBot) December 11, 2015
Perhaps this is Twitter’s doing and not Amex. That would jive with some of the things we have seen like people’s (including mine) Twitter accounts being shutdown and the @Offersbot account being removed from Twitter’s universal search. It could be that Twitter is cracking down on the entire Amex Offers program or it could be that Amex and Twitter are working together to do this. We simply don’t know.
What I Think
I don’t know what to think at this point, but there clearly is an issue. I do kind of think if Amex was running a program to compare information that my accounts would have experienced the registration error today like they did a few weeks ago. Instead, because I tweeted during a low traffic time, all of my offers were loaded (or at least I received the emails for them) and the notifications were instant. I’m also not sure how they could limit offers per name since many first and last names are common.
There is one other strange thing that I can’t explain. After being tipped off by a reader to look at my Serve card, I logged in and cannot find the Jet offer in the “loaded offers” section despite having received a confirmation email about it. That could mean Amex is revoking the registration or it could just mean the system is screwed up. There are most likely a lot more people taking advantage of Amex Offers now compared to in the past, so perhaps their infrastructure isn’t scaling during high traffic periods.
Stick with Automation & A New Strategy?
As Chuck points out, automation probably isn’t a good idea at this point until we figure everything out. (Even though it isn’t currently working anyway.) If you use automation and tweet out to all of your accounts, the offer will disappear from other accounts linked to the same login. If half of your tweets fail, then you won’t be able to go to the Amex website to load the offers on those cards. Here will be my new process for now:
- Check the Amex website and load using the multiple tab trick if possible.
- Once all possible cards are loaded via the website, I’ll send out a tweet to all of my Twitter accounts for cards that I couldn’t sync.
Hopefully this problem will be resolved one way or another soon so we can figure things out and maximize the offers within whatever new framework is setup.
Conclusion
Since I have been receiving emails and questions all day about this, I thought I would chime in after I read and researched the problem as much as possible. Yes, the truth is something is going on and it very well could be bad, but we simply don’t know yet or at least I believe we don’t know all of the rules or factors in play here.
Have you experienced anything different? Feel free to share your data points and observations in the comments!
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I had the Newegg loaded on several of my credit cards and used it and received credit on all but two. One of the unused offers on my AMEX B Gold card just disappeared before I used it. The other AMEX Delta Bus G was still available last I looked
I also had a Small Bus offer on my SPG Bus $20 off $100. Itwas there when I used the card at a qualified small business, but disappeared a few days later when it expired and I never received my credit. This was the only card with this offer. I had another similar offer for $10 off on my personal SPG that worked fine.
One other strange thing, I used the Petconoffer for $5 off $10, purchased gift cards with several credit cards. The offer still show available on each card. I have never been billed the $10 nor have I received the $5 offer. The gift cards came within a few days. Have not used them yet so not sure if they are active!
Yes, some wired things going on with AMEX offers.
I loaded the Airbnb offer on multiple cards. Used it 3 times this month as my wife and I are travelling to Europe next summer and only 1 booking triggered the statement credit. I called about the other 2 and Amex said I could only use it once, even though I could load it onto multiple cards. This, of course, made no sense and I argued my case to the Amex rep. I ended up getting another $50 credit.
Well, I had my oldest one done over the phone after calling. My second, on a different card (Gold VS clear) went automatically after 13 days. I have SEVEN more to go and will chat online on each separately at 14 days after the use of the GC. They allowed the things to go on the cards and I do not see how they can afterwards say you didn’t get the deal. Fair is fair.
I tried to load the offer this morning using multiple tabs on a browser. I had the offer up on both tabs, and then it failed to load on the second card. This method has always worked for me in the past.
I too was up at 3am and happened to catch it and load my cards. I have two on Twitter (Costco cards). The first I got the “syned” message and was surprised that my second card said it was “already loaded” when it obviously hadn’t been. I figured I would readdress the problem when I was more awake and was surprised to see both cards had the offer attached to it. That does lead me to believe that it is an issue on their end and not the end of wonderful offers. Trying to see the glass half full I guess!
I loaded multiple offers onto multiple cards today well late into the morning Pacific. BUT! I did it through the websites as I have different log-ins for each card. I storngly suspect this is, as you say, a TWITTER thing. That format is shaky as Twitter is changing things around inside their system for a lot of different things and reasons.
I do not believe at this time that Amex is behind this. However, the Tweet thing might well be doomed or damaged, at least for a while.
I would strongly urge folks to try loading through the browsers before using Twitter. That’s my opinion though, of course.
I believe that Serve only shows offers that are targeted to Serve. You can register your Serve for any Twitter offer, but the unless the offer also allowed for manual registration through your serve login it doesn’t sho up in your loaded offers list. It’s still there, you just can’t see it (like on a 3rd party card).
I also remember automating the AmexDD offer and then seeing it in he available offers list later. I didn’t realize at the time that it hadn’t successfully loaded to all my cards. It gave me n error when i tried loading manually but I just assumed it was a glitch be that I was be set anyway.
If this really is Amex shutting things down, why would they send messages saying you’re already registered. Seems pretty easy to browbeat @askamex into getting your money based on that.