Originally Posted by
TravelStar
I read the Amex Membership Rewards Terms and Conditions the same way. However, when I tried to buy 500,000 points and immediately redeem them into my British Air Account it was refused. I spoke with several MR representatives and at least one MR Supervisor who told me their "system" would not let them do this as my MR account already had a balance of over 500,000 miles. I even spoke with one Rep who agreed with me about the wording of the Terms and Conditions and had been able to do it in the past, but said "they must have changed the computer" because "it won't allow me to do it".
Interesting. I guess it depends on how you interpret the rules. Perhaps the issue is that what you're trying to do is the equivalent of moving 500,000 existing MR points to DL, then immediately purchasing 500,000 MR points and leaving them in the MR account. Since that would be a prohibited transaction, you were prohibited from doing what you tried to do since it's an equivalent transaction. There may some tax reason (Amex corp income tax, not excise tax) why they don't want to sell MR points to cardholders and have them sit in the account.