OK, I talked to the friend again - this time I realized she has MISUNDERSTOOD completely on the screen of Card Benefit. She kept telling me there was a box to click and then it brought her to FN booking screen with a Start Booking green box - what she totally omitted was the not so small print on the AMEX screen... Sigh.
This is what AMEX showed on the Start Booking Screen
After your Card account anniversary, your Free Night Award will arrive as an e-certificate that can be viewed on the Activity page within your account. Free Night Award e-certificates can be used in combination with points when booking your stay. For example, use a Free Night Award e-certificate for the first night and use points for the balance of your stay. Select hotels have resort fees.How To Use Your Free Night Award
- Select 'Use Points' in the hotel search form on SPG.com.
- A list of hotels will display; make your selection and then choose a standard room
- In "Reservations Details," select option to use your Free Night Award e-certificate(s).
- NOTE: When using your Free Night Award e-certificate(s), you can only book one room at a time. In some cases, you may receive a message to call before using your e-certificate(s).
AMEX is telling us the FN cert comes as an eCert that would show up in our SPG account activity page, and not inbedded in AMEX card as this friend have thought so all along.
In other words, said friend have NOT received her Free Night Cert. In fact she does not even understand her AF posting date has nothing to do with the anniversary date. Fortunately it is Sept 4th, so that means most likely the anniversary is after Aug 1st, therefore eligible for this year's FN cert.
The Next Question is, given we have NEW SPG numbers now, as well as some of you have combined your accounts, just how AMEX can link the old account to the new account? From my reading, you have to call AMEX to give them the new SPG account number, or the combined account number, so the SPG card's earned points can be correctly posted.
I suspect this would be the same for the FN cert to correctly deposit to our accounts.
Whoever have been eligible to receive the FN cert already, may want to call AMEX to update your SPG numbers. Else you may just keep waiting and would not see anything.