"Enhancements" to MR earn on Platinum Card, Reserve & Centurian

[Moopere]

This is American Express' problem, not ours.

I agree with your post. However, whilst it remains Amex's legal problem, its morphs into a consumer aggravation because it means you have to reconcile each line of your Amex statement to ensure you have been properly credited and for those line items not properly credited you have to call/email and follow up - taking ones time (which is never free).

Honestly, schemes like this that go completely overboard with detail and complexity are bound to fail, and continue to fail, no matter the bedding in time.

As a marketing tactic there is just no way, in my opinion, that Amex thinks this new deal is a good way to attract and retain customers. I feel sure that this is a subtle corporate way of showing us the door - they cannot possibly want to support the product and are trying to wean down the customer base.

Having watched the changes in the past 12-18 months as a customer, it seems to me that Amex in Australia at least, is trying to divorce themselves from Membership Rewards liabilities in favour of direct earn to other peoples loyalty schemes (direct to airlines for example) or whatever shared arrangement is being run in the back-office for the bank branded Amex cards (usually a banks own points system)

 

[wiz]

My point exactly: It's far too complicated and time consuming to reconcile a MR statement. As far as I'm concerned, currently, the offer applies to all forms of travel purchases. It's up to AMEX to ensure this is applied universally, otherwise there may need to be outside intervention.

_______________________________________
My new travel blog: www.vacationkickbacks.com

 

[oz_mark]

You could take the 'false advertising' route...?

Not so sure, if you follow all the footnotes etc, you do end up with a statement about them needing to be categorised the right way in their system. So they may be covered from an advertising perspective. Whether such a contract is fair or not is a different question though!

 

[anat0l]

Guess I should also raise an inconsistency from the recent AFF weekend.

We had dinner at Videre, the high floor restaurant at RACV Royal Pines. I paid for drinks with my meal (the meal was prepaid) using my Platinum Reserve.

Normally you'd think for a restaurant I'd be entitled to 3 points per dollar. But the charge had gone through as the merchant being Royal Pines. Since that merchant is a hotel, it falls under the category of 2 points per dollar.



Sent from my GT-I9300 using AustFreqFly

 

[Brooke01]

Hi all,

Something I found interesting today. I manually printed out my current Centurion transaction listing for the month. I now see that each transaction is categorised into "Travel, Entertainment, Retail, Business Services and Communications - 5 categories". You then can look at a fancy pi-graph to tell you what portion you did in each category for the month etc. Anyway - found it interesting that all my fuel and toll purchases are categorised as "travel". I know these would not really qualify for 2x points as they are not technically "travel" but interesting that they are listed as "travel" and not "retail" or "business services" for the tolls. I wonder if you really wanted to get picky you could query if they should infact be allocated the 2x points since they are classed as "travel". Also interesting that all my car hires are "travel" classed - but only 1x point. I would have thought that car hire would of perhaps been put in the 2x points category as most car hires do come under "proper" travel - IYKWIM ???

Confusing - just a little bit ! LOL

Cheers,

Brooke

 

[lovestotravel]

Of course it's confusing it's Amex

I have just made a reservation with one of the travel partners on the Amex travel list. The company has had to increase their credit card surcharge after Amex increased their merchant fee on the 1st of October.

Nice that Amex gives us more points but simply slugs the travel operator higher merchant fees.

3% surcharge is a little high for 2 points per $1

But it's still worth it

 

[moa999]

So the travel providers are upping their fees..
Yet we still are hit with 1.48% on the ATO portal.

 

[burmans]

Do you think the ACCC might be interested to hear about this?

_______________________________________
My new travel blog: www.vacationkickbacks.com

I do when Hotelclubs site says

HotelClub is a world leading global accommodation website, which was established in 1996. HotelClub provides over 74,000 accommodation choices in over 7,400 cities worldwide throughout 141 countries.

This falls under the deceptive and misleading conduct rules IMO. The bit about paying 2* for travel and accomodation is on Amex's website, ACC would then agree its their job to get it right.

 

[Chicken]

I do when Hotelclubs site says

The catch is what is printed on the web site.

Airlines, accommodation, major cruises and tour operators paid directly or through travel agents listed here

Hotel Club is not an operator, but an agent; and if Hotel Club is not listed in that list, then I have nothing to catch them on, contract wise.

Of course, Fair Trading side of thing would be different, and I don't know how much we can "do" AmEx on this front.

 

[burmans]

The catch is what is printed on the web site.

Airlines, accommodation, major cruises and tour operators paid directly or through travel agents listed here

Hotel Club is not an operator, but an agent; and if Hotel Club is not listed in that list, then I have nothing to catch them on, contract wise.

Of course, Fair Trading side of thing would be different, and I don't know how much we can "do" AmEx on this front.

If doesn't have to be listed, according to the document you eventually get to (my underlining)

https://www.americanexpress.com/australia/pdfs/terms-and-conditions-travel-merchants.pdf

Earn 2 Membership Rewards points per $1 spent at airlines, accommodation, major cruise and tour operators paid directly or through travel agencies, including the following travel agencies:

And

Merchants displayed are correct as at May 2012, and does not represent a comprehensive list of all American Express Card-accepting merchants. ​

By their own admission this is not a complete list. There is a reasonableness test that would be applied here and I am confident most of the relevant government agencies would agree you are entitled to have a reasonable expaction that expenditure at a company such Hotelclub is in their capacity as an agent selling accomodation.

 

[yuhannl]

I didn't want to start another new thread on something that's related to this one, so I figure I'd post it here.

It appears that Plat Charge card members can only get the Platinum Reserve CC as the complimentary credit card, as opposed to being able to get the Plat Edge.
Apparently this was possible previously but the policy has been changed.

I just got off the call with them on this one. Hope this helps.

Having said that, if anyone did this in the past few days (I highly doubt it), I'm happy to get the contact info of the person from Amex who helped ya.

 

[Febs]

No issues so far with new earn rates. Earning more points than ever even with the rounding down. All restaurants even our weekend brunches have credited with triple points regardless of establishment. Delayed a few flight bookings and overseas currency transactions till Oct and enjoying the 50% more points. Happy days.

Same here mate. Checked my statement and was pleasantly surprised to see a big increase in points. Spend is mostly bars, restaurants and travel, so if this continues - happy days indeed.

 

[scaredeycat]

Last year I put about $600,000 on the charge card, but I'm seriously considering directing my business elsewhere - not so much because the changes will cost me points, nor because of the insurance changes - it's more because the way they have implemented their new rules just smacks of sneakiness, almost to the point of dishonesty. They have lost my trust- and why should I continue to do business with them if I no longer trust them? Admittedly I must seem like a very small fish to them, but if lots of fish escape from the net, eventually questions will get asked and maybe heads will roll...

 

[diningdecadence]

think it may have only happened within the past 24 hours, but when i go to membership rewards online it now splits out every transaction pretty nicely with a bonus points column for the respective offers. (e.g. i got a recent spend $25 at a supermarket, get 1000 bonus points) which have credited correctly and shown neatly. also splits out by merchant, and categorises the merchants etc. (on a qantas direct earn gold credit card)

 

[kpc]

Anyone getting dble MR points for foreign transactions? Checked out from Hilton Cape Town last week and was only credited with 1 MR pt per $ spent, instead of the expected 2:shock:

Had double points from my overseas transactions -UK and USA last week.

I really don't expect them to get it right. Another 'fail' in my account.

13/10/2012 HOTELCLUB PTY LIMITED $120.95 120 0 120

No paid for SAL flights last week 2pts for flights from Au 1 pt for flights from Thailand charged in THB both booked on same SAL website total failure as far as I'm concerned I thought it was 2 pts for all flights

Despite 3 calls to AMEX, I have not received 2 MR points per $ spent on foreign transactions (but did receive 0.5 pts per $ spent for my Telstra bill:evil....I'm about to go OS again this week, and my AMEX will NOT be used....in fact I will cancel both the Reserve and Charge cards in early Jan just before my Charge card renewal is due.

 

[Flashback]

Despite 3 calls to AMEX, I have not received 2 MR points per $ spent on foreign transactions (but did receive 0.5 pts per $ spent for my Teltra bill:evil:....I'm about to go OS again this week, and my AMEX will NOT be used....in fact I will cancel both the Reserve and Charge cards in early Jan just before my Charge card renewal is due.

I'd cancel as soon as you get back from OS and don't need the travel insurance, that way you'll get more of a rebate on the annual fee.

 

[NM]

I have now managed to arrange my affairs such that I get 3 MR points/$ for ALL my Amex spend.

 

[myturn]

how did you manage that?

 

[burmans]

how did you manage that?

My guess is he'd buying a card of some sort at a supermarket or 7/11 that he can use elsewhere? (NM- You don't have to advertise, just PM me if correct!)

 

[NM]

how did you manage that?

Easy, I only use my Amex card at establishments that result in 3 points/$. I don't use my Amex card anywhere else. I use my EDR Master Card for everything else.