Forfeited AMEX points -help!
 

So my PRG was up for renewal, talked with the retention person who made a few offers. When I called back to accept one of them, the answering machine cancelled my card when I requested "cancellation retention" before I could ever speak to anyone.
When I later decided to let the card go and send my 55k reward points to an airline, I spent over an hour on the phone talking to every different department but getting nowhere.
I was told the points were swept, the 30 day grace that the retention person mentioned was only good if I had another card, which I don't (but could have easily if I had known).

There must be some way to get these points back - erroneous cancellation? misquote from AMEX agent? temporarily re-activate the card? set up a new one?
I know this must not be the first time this has happened, but I couldn't locate any info on this topic. Any help appreciated!

How much time between when you think the card was cancelled and your wanting to transfer the points? Hours? Days? Weeks?

About 3 weeks from when the AMEX answering machine cancelled and when I called to transfer points.

This part is accurate. read the terms here:

https://rewards.americanexpress.com/...v=footer-tandc

I would wait until Wednesday and contact American Express during regular business hours (EDT), and ask them to re-open the account and restore the points. You did not ask to close the account, you pushed a button to speak with someone.

Never, ever, use an obscure term like "retention" to an automated voice-recognition system. Gosh, haft the frontline agents at banks don't even know the word "retention". So all the answering system would have understood was the "cancellation" word.

SImply say "agent" and wait for a human if you ever want to try for retention offers related to thinking about cancellation.

Although probably the best option at this point, it may be a bit of a hard sell. For anyone hearing such an explanation, it's going to sound a lot more like someone cancelling 3 weeks ago, recently discovering that the 30-day rule doesn't apply to them since they don't have another card, and then claiming to never have intended to cancel. And a lot less like someone that accidentally canceled their card 3 weeks ago, but didn't realize it until now. Assuming the machine falsely interpreted your request to cancel a card, what happened next? I find it hard to believe that it didn't at least confirm once that that was your intention, and after that, said something like "Okay, I've canceled your account." What did it say at the time that made you think that something other than your card was cancelled? And, what were you actually calling about that obviously didn't happen, and why didn't you call back in order to get the original task done?

Or mash 0 like mad.