Originally Posted by
OskiBear
Just a few data points -
I selected Southwest as my airline and it confirmed (via email) on the Amex site. I then proceed to book two flights for $98.98. Neither one ever caused the meter to go down and did not get reimbursed.
One week later, I booked a flight for $93.98 and after it posted, the meter went down and then it credited. Booked a second flight for $93.98 and am waiting for that one to post/credit.
So, I guess the moral of the story is to give it a few days to properly set as the selected airline. I think I knew this from other Amex cards, but the confirmation came so quick I figured it would work and I didn’t want to lose the fare. Not a big deal as I actually need to take all these flights, but figured the data points would help some one.
I wonder if a variant on this happened to me, or something different
Aug 26 - Get the email from Amex confirming 'Southwest is selected for incidentals fee credit'
Sep 1 - Booked 2 x $148 fare, apply 2 WN GC for $65 on each, residual of $83 is billed to Amex Plat for each (done as two separate bookings)
Sep 1 - Pending charge of $83 is noted as 'additional collection'
Sep 2 - charge posts but now includes all the actual flight information, and is noted as 'Airline' in the category spending tab
Sep 5 - needle has not moved (yet) and I'm suspecting that it won't, as most reports have have that happening fairly quickly. (And of course no credit)
EDIT/UPDATE: on 9/6 two separate $83 credits posted backdated to 9/5 ! No email from Amex and meter never moved ahead of time, until 9/6, when credits arrived.
So I'm trying to figure out what caused this, since I still have 3-4 months to try again, and I suppose could switch carriers if the credit has not been used.
Was it
a) the initial flight being above $100 (even with GC applied later to bring it below)
b) not enough time between selection of airline and transaction
c) something else, like Amex RAT / IT team shutting this down
d) two $83 charges happening at roughly the same time, even separately, overwhelm the incidentals trigger?
e) just random flukiness which seems to happen sometimes no matter what
I did need to book those paid flights in any case but its still a bit disappointing, since I thought I did everything 'correctly'.