Originally Posted by
platbrownguy
I mean, good on you for being proactive. But you might as well park it in a HYSA and earn a couple grand while AA realizes its error. (I suppose they could argue that you held it for their benefit but my hunch is they would be grateful to get the money back at all!)
ETA: Never mind. I get it. You didn't get cash, you got an Amex refund. And you don't want to both lose the points (that you shouldn't have to lose anyhow) and somehow be issued a check for the negative balance that you didn't want to have, only to have to pay AA back in cash rather than on your card.
That's actually a pretty wild situation.
You're spot on with the loss of 5x points analysis, but not only that, I don't think my card can handle a 6-figure transaction charge. This is going to have to be a correction coordinated by AA and AMEX. Hoping for insight if anyone has had to do something similar before. The only way this error could have happened is if the refund was a manual process, which means something similar must have happened to someone out there before, perhaps not on such a large scale.