VegasGambler

I'm wondering if anyone has bought Amex gift cards through the VX fly store portal? How long did it take your points to show up as pending?

I bought a large GC yesterday (taking advantage of the 2x portal pts). This is my first purchase through the fly store portal. It says that most transactions show as pending within 24 hrs, but it can take up to 5 days. But I am figuring that they 5 day thing is overly-conservative, and if they haven't shown up as pending within 24 hrs there is probably a problem. Is this true or am I just being impatient?

VegasGambler

Well, I just received an email from amex saying that my order has been approved, so hopefully I'll see some pending points tonight or tomorrow?

I had better get these points, otherwise I just paid a purchase fee + shipping for no reason.

socalgecko

I just noticed the first purchase bonus posted to my account twice. I did make a couple of different buys through the portal on the first day the store went live, but I'm curious if this happened to anyone else. If yes, did VX claw back the points eventually?

VegasGambler

What do you need to do to get your purchases to track properly?

My Amex GC never did show up as pending. I submitted a claim and they manually added it while they file a claim with amex. Hopefully that works.

Then, yesterday, I switched to a different browser, disabled all my ad-block stuff, signed into the elevate store, and cliked through to Staples where I bough a $100 starbucks GC for $102 (I had $20 back on $100 through Amex sync). But that hasn't shown up as pending yet either. So, I'm 0-for-2 so far.

I haven't used any promo codes or coupons or anything. What am I doing wrong here? Once could just be bad luck, but 0-for-2 is starting to look like a pattern. In 4 more days I'll submit another claim if it hasn't shown up yet, but hopefully I don't need to manually submit claims for every single purchase.

dktahara

Just a data point since the current 2x/$ on Amex GCs is a phenomenal deal: I purchased my GCs on 12/9, had them approved 12/10, and the points showed as pending on Flystore early today (12/11). FWIW BeFrugal usually posts within 5 hours of purchase (even before approval, although they get clawed back if you are declined).

Slight weirdness, though -- the purchase was $2000 (+3.95), and it's showing up as 3981 pending points. I'm not inclined to argue that though

VegasGambler

Shouldn't it be 4007?

VegasGambler

Anyway I am going to try this again with the Amex GC, this time the full $10k. My $2k purchase did not track and neither did my $100 Starbucks GC from Staples (both are now pending after I sent an email complaining and got a form-letter reply after several days).

I'm going to try a new browser in incognito mode with all add-ons disabled. Hopefully I eventually end up getting these pts...

dktahara

Don't use Incognito since it specifically requests that sites don't track you. It took me a while before I realized that's the case. I've actually started just opening up Safari (I'm a Chrome user), clearing any previous state, and running a normal session with no ad-blocker, etc. That should work, but let me know how it goes.

dktahara

Yep, exactly (though I think they'd round up in that case so it would be 4008). That was why I made the note . It's only a 27 point difference on ~4000, so I'm just going to count my blessings and let it be.

VegasGambler

DNT is a seperate setting that you can change whether or not you are in incognito.

Go to settings, "show advanced", and it's under privacy.

I'm also not sure if the portal respects DNT requests.

dktahara

As a follow-up, has anyone had success buying American Express Business GCs and having them credit? All the other portals explicitly list Business GCs but Flystore doesn't (although they don't exclude them explicitly either).

VegasGambler

EDIT: I was wrong about this. Showing 0 pts was an error on their end; they say that the transaction has been approved and I will get my 4k+ pts tomorrow.

dktahara

T&C now explicitly limit the denominations of GCs that are eligible for rewards -- up to $2000.

It seems to me from the wording that you can purchase multiple $2000 cards in the same transaction and still get credit, but I haven't tried it (and won't unless they offer 2x points again).

Another note -- I did receive credit for the Business gift cards i purchased a while back. All told, netted 19911 points for a total cost of $90.

mdosu

yes, this also happened to me as well. They clawed it back.