highops

I wanted a better excuse than "I only spent enough to get the bonus" when I called to cancel my PRG today.

I blamed the mall and mentioned Chase. It sounded like I am not the only one by the reaction of the representative.

karlmitchell

No statement for another week or so here. That would be a shame. No other mysterious 3Xs in your statement then?

karlmitchell

Well, I renewed thanks to a fairly generous retention offer. I'm going to see out the year and get my 15k bonus again as a result. Unless a mall replacement comes up before my renewal next year, I'll certainly be pushing for another retention bonus or cancelling. They really need to come up with something, or else Chase are going to take a lot of their business!

-Karl

goodeats21

I was poking around the Amex website today, and stumbled across this...Sounds pretty definitive that the Amex Mall is now truly dead...

http://www.membershiprewards.com/cat...=Earn%20Points

More and more spend to Chase UR now, and probably kill off all but one of my Amex as well once fees are due.

Edit: Ooops. I now see the Points Guy had already posted about this up-thread, though it did not come across very clearly without clicking on his link. I will leave the text posted here for clarity.

karlmitchell

Yes, it was a real shame. I only renewed this year due to a retention bonus, so they'll get one more year to reintroduce some value. Otherwise, like many others, Chase and the rest will get my business.

karlmitchell

Well, the mysterious 3x MR bonuses for my Amex PRG are still here. I just looked at my most recent (February) statement, and received bonuses for the following merchants:

Bestbuy.com
Water & Power Cashier
LivingSocial
Wag.com
Amazon.com (Marketplace 3rd party only)

The results seem consistent with previous ones. Note that "Water and Power Cashier" is a local utility, but online credit card payments process as an Internet Purchase.

Furthermore, the March statement pending points are listed, and if I apply the following bonuses to my statement:

Gas x2
Groceries x2
Internet Purchase x3
Vehicle Rental x3 (perhaps all of Travel?)

I get within 10 points of the pending points, the rest being accountable for by considering that for 3x bonuses, you only receive the extra points on the purchase, not on any sales tax. (Note that I pay my utility bill bi-monthly, and so that does not contribute this month). The results seem very consistent from statement to statement.

Does anyone have any non-flight, non-vehicle rental purchases under the Travel category they can check?

My theory remains unaffected: American Express are experimenting with giving 3x category bonuses in order to make up for the withdrawal of the mall. If so, and if Internet Purchases and Travel (or at least Vehicle Rental) remain stable 3x categories, this will make the Amex PRG very competitive with Chase Ultimate Rewards once more.

Thanks,

-Karl

Tim O'Brien

re your experiment comment, one can only hope, i've found myself reaching for the CSP more and more for all transactions, initially just for travel and restaurants, now i've taken the view why not enjoy the 7% yr end kicker, if the amex mall was still there i'd be using it, but that's a big disadvantage for amex now

The_Wrath_of_Khan

Interstingly I received 3x for AP this last month.

Simpleton

This is nothing new (at least to me). What is very interesting is that karlmitchell seemed to get triple on regular Amazon.com. Is that right?...

karlmitchell

Simpleton: No, not on regular Amazon.com. Those are still charged as "Merchandise & Supplies - Department Stores". I should have clarifies that I mean the Amazon Marketplace 3rd party purchases which are charged as "Merchandise & Supplies - Internet Purchases". I have clarified this now in my post.

karlmitchell

I found an interesting discussion on credit card use at Amazon.

In the main, they found similar to us. If a purchase is from regular Amazon, it will go through as "Category: Merchandise & Supplies - Department Stores". If it is from a Marketplace vendor, it goes through as "Category: Merchandise & Supplies - Internet Purchase".

However, if it's via Amazon, but is a mixture of Marketplace and Amazon, it also goes through as "Category: Merchandise & Supplies - Internet Purchase". In theory, this should make regular Amazon purchases give you the current 3x MR return. Maybe it's worth mixing it up a little if you have a large purchase?

I have not confirmed this.

Best wishes,

-Karl

guoguo914

This is a great finding!

On a side note, what's the category of your paypal purchase? I made two paypal purchases in Feb and Mar, both categorized as "Category: Business Services - Internet Services" and hence don't get 3x for my feb 2013 statement.

UKOK

How can you even tell where your points came from?...under my point summary (activity detail tab) I only see 18,000 points from Feb statement. Can't see any indication of which purchases, if any, gave bonus points. Help the helpless...

karlmitchell

UKUK: You have to look it up under your statement. From the main page go to statement balance, then you can either click on the + to the left of each transaction, or you can select view by Category. It might take some effort to track down which payment is which.

guoguo914: In response to your question, all were "Merchandise & Supplies - Internet Purchase". I guess paypal can process transactions in more than one way.

guoguo914

got you. thanks for the info. it seems paypal will first categorizes the purchase and then send the info to Amex.