Reversing a large upgrade charge on my Amex

Old Apr 10, 2018, 5:46 pm
  #1  
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Reversing a large upgrade charge on my Amex

There are a lot of particulars to this story that I can't share yet, but does anyone have any advice about how to reach American Express' "corporate" department that is in charge of disputes? Basically, I have a multi-thousand dollar charge on my card because of an upgrade that I shouldn't have been charged for and none of the Rewards reps have had the power to do anything about it so they "escalated to corporate" about 30 days ago. Told me I should hear back in 7-10 days and nothing so far. Bill is now due in 10 days.

It's maddening that none of the reps even have access to the case and none can even give me a phone number to call where I can get status on it. I have a reference number for the case but nobody with whom to discuss it. I also have a letter all ready to email or snail-mail if I just knew where, but sending a blanket mail to a main headquarters address doesn't seem like the best bet.

------------------------

(Edit: Adding more details now)

Hey there. OP here. Sorry I didn't fill in more of the blanks on the original post. I'm just trying to give Amex a chance to do the right thing here, but it's been almost 40 days now and it's still "pending" without so much as an update.

So, here's what happened: we were getting ready to take a 15 hour flight home after a trip and got to the airport three hours early to make sure we got the best chance at a mileage upgrade to business class. We always fly coach but for 163,000 miles, we could upgrade so it seemed like a great deal. We tried to transfer the points from our Amex account to Emirates but it wasn't working. Something to do with recently switching Amex cards (both cards were in the same account and the points are still in there). We called up Amex from the airport and the Amex agent told us that in order to get the upgrade, we should pay for the upgrade in cash and then call Amex after the flight at which point they'd have the charge reversed and paid for in points. That sounded great, as it seemed like something that happened from time-to-time whereby the card company and the airline would just work things out if there was a points snafu. We thus paid for the upgrade in cash (~$8300!), took the flight, and a day or two later, called Amex to begin the process of reversal. That is when the problem started. The agent told me Amex didn't have a policy of doing this and that they weren't able to reverse the charge. !!! I told them there is no way in the world I would voluntarily pay $8300 for an airline upgrade (especially when Emirates offered us an $1800 cash upgrade a couple of days earlier), and then I got passed on to a supervisor. The supervisor was very nice but was also befuddled about what to do so he "escalated it to corporate". I have a reference number for that. I assume that means going back and listening to the phone call, which I hope they can do. The problem is, they originally told me 7-10 days, and it's been almost 40 now. They keep telling me to call back every 10 days or so, and so I have, but nobody can tell me *anything* other than it's "pending in corporate". All I want to do is get a phone number, email, or mail address of anyone I can talk to over there and just get an update and maybe even further explain my side of what happened here. There seems to be some sort of firewall between rewards/disputes and corporate. Note: this has not been filed as normal "dispute" since it's not a fraudulent charge. I tried to do that too, just to make sure it's getting attention, but the people in that department advised me against it.

Anyway, bottom line here: I have an $8300 on my card that is only there because Amex advised me it would be temporary. Very stressful.

Any ideas? Apologies but I don't really want to get into the full details of the charge yet, because for all I know, it IS being handled and I don't want to be unfair to Amex.

Last edited by chickenmittens; Apr 17, 2018 at 12:45 pm Reason: Adding in more details about the situation.
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Old Apr 10, 2018, 5:56 pm
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This is an upgrade charge from an Airline? Hotel? Cruise Ship? What's the nature of it.
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Old Apr 10, 2018, 6:02 pm
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You should pay the bill.

If the dispute/investigation is in your favor, you can always just ask them to send you a check with the negative balance.
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Old Apr 10, 2018, 6:21 pm
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Isn't standard practice for a dispute for them to give you a provisional credit, so that you don't have to pay the disputed amount, nor face interest or late fees, while the investigation is ongoing?
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Old Apr 10, 2018, 9:02 pm
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You can dispute the charge online. AmEx will give you a provisional credit on certain types of disputes, and you tell them what kind of dispute you have via a menu selection. I believe you access the dispute resolution center by finding the transaction online and looking for a "dispute this charge" (or similar language) next to the transaction.
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Old Apr 11, 2018, 9:22 pm
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I've only disputed two charges in 6 years on my Platinum AMEX, and in both cases during the phone call the rep told me that they were reversing the charge from my account immediately, pending the outcome of the investigation, and that I would be advised when they were resolved. One I had to pay (my error) and one was struck off my account.
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Old Apr 11, 2018, 11:31 pm
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Originally Posted by Steve M
Isn't standard practice for a dispute for them to give you a provisional credit, so that you don't have to pay the disputed amount, nor face interest or late fees, while the investigation is ongoing?
Yes. It's based on federal law (Fair Credit Billing Act).

Not clear to me why OP hasn't simply disputed the charge. More details would be helpful.
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Old Apr 15, 2018, 7:50 pm
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Originally Posted by Kacee
Yes. It's based on federal law (Fair Credit Billing Act).

Not clear to me why OP hasn't simply disputed the charge. More details would be helpful.
Agreed. The normal dispute method would have been the place to start.
Maybe OP already did that and the merchant reported back to Amex that the charge was legit?
At that point, there may not be much Amex can do (e.g., not sure if there is a formal appeal process, I never had to do that). If the amount is less than $5k, then Small Claims Court would be the next course of action.
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Old Apr 17, 2018, 12:36 pm
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Hey there. OP here. Sorry I didn't fill in more of the blanks on the original post. I'm just trying to give Amex a chance to do the right thing here, but it's been almost 40 days now and it's still "pending" without so much as an update.

So, here's what happened: we were getting ready to take a 15 hour flight home after a trip and got to the airport three hours early to make sure we got the best chance at a mileage upgrade to business class. We always fly coach but for 163,000 miles, we could upgrade so it seemed like a great deal. We tried to transfer the points from our Amex account to Emirates but it wasn't working. Something to do with recently switching Amex cards (both cards were in the same account and the points are still in there). We called up Amex from the airport and the Amex agent told us that in order to get the upgrade, we should pay for the upgrade in cash and then call Amex after the flight at which point they'd have the charge reversed and paid for in points. That sounded great, as it seemed like something that happened from time-to-time whereby the card company and the airline would just work things out if there was a points snafu. We thus paid for the upgrade in cash (~$8300!), took the flight, and a day or two later, called Amex to begin the process of reversal. That is when the problem started. The agent told me Amex didn't have a policy of doing this and that they weren't able to reverse the charge. !!! I told them there is no way in the world I would voluntarily pay $8300 for an airline upgrade (especially when Emirates offered us an $1800 cash upgrade a couple of days earlier), and then I got passed on to a supervisor. The supervisor was very nice but was also befuddled about what to do so he "escalated it to corporate". I have a reference number for that. I assume that means going back and listening to the phone call, which I hope they can do. The problem is, they originally told me 7-10 days, and it's been almost 40 now. They keep telling me to call back every 10 days or so, and so I have, but nobody can tell me *anything* other than it's "pending in corporate". All I want to do is get a phone number, email, or mail address of anyone I can talk to over there and just get an update and maybe even further explain my side of what happened here. There seems to be some sort of firewall between rewards/disputes and corporate. Note: this has not been filed as normal "dispute" since it's not a fraudulent charge. I tried to do that too, just to make sure it's getting attention, but the people in that department advised me against it.

Anyway, bottom line here: I have an $8300 on my card that is only there because Amex advised me it would be temporary. Very stressful.
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Old Apr 17, 2018, 12:49 pm
  #10  
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Originally Posted by chickenmittens
... tried to transfer the points from our Amex account to Emirates but it wasn't working. Something to do with recently switching Amex cards (both cards were in the same account and the points are still in there).
This is a known limitation of Membership Rewards transfers to Emirates, see reports here:

MR to Emirates after changing MR account number

No doubt it is accurate that American Express does not have a policy for handling transfer failures this way, but they need to listen to the recording of your telephone call and decide to honor the offer or not. However, I don't think a "dispute" is the correct way to handle this, because you did authorize Emirates to charge your card. Your disagreement is with American Express, not the airline. I would pay the bill and pursue the claim separately.
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Old Apr 17, 2018, 1:13 pm
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Thanks Mia. Our Membership Rewards account number didn't change so that wasn't the issue. I agree with you though in that this is something that is on Amex and not the airline. I would just hope that Amex would be able to work with Emirates to remedy the injured party here, which is me.
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Old Apr 17, 2018, 1:26 pm
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This sounds so dodgy in so many ways. I cant imagine (but Ill give you the benefit of the doubt) that Amex would advise you to spend $8,300 on an upgrade that they would later reverse with MR points. For you to upgrade with MR->EK points there would have had to have been award space. Is this proactively checked ex post? How does Amex account for the cost of the upgrade? What if you had been quoted $20,000? I think your only hope is to get a release of that phone call. I personally would have requested the agents name, and asked whether this call was being recorded, in fact I would have asked for supervisor approval, before forking over that much money.
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Old Apr 17, 2018, 4:08 pm
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On a separate note, I'd prefer to pay $1800 for the upgrade instead of using 163k MR pts, unless I had millions of points.
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Old Apr 17, 2018, 5:11 pm
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LondonElite: Yeah, I ideally if I could do it again, I would ask the agent to specifically note "customer is not responsible for this charge" on my account notes and then have her read it back to me and then get her name just to be sure. Honestly though, I've been an Amex customer for years and have had nothing but the best customer service from them so I had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. I mean, if things went as planned and we were friends and then I happen to mention what happened to you, you would probably be like "Yep, Amex customer service is great." To your other question, yes, there was plenty of space in business class. It was half full. That this could be done via an after-the-fact points transfer was entirely plausible to me because the upgrade is a zero marginal cost thing. We already had our previously paid for tickets, got into two already empty seats, and then just fell asleep. If Amex tells me they can get that sort of thing paid for with points (via, what I assume is an ongoing relationship with airlines), I had no reason to disbelieve them.
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Old Apr 17, 2018, 11:18 pm
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Originally Posted by chickenmittens
To your other question, yes, there was plenty of space in business class. It was half full.
chickenmittens, I don't think you understand. There needed to have been upgrade space at the time you were seeking to use points to upgrade (unless the EK system is very different to most others, which I don't believe it is). The fact that there were empty J seats on the flight itself is not relevant, since EK may not have been willing to sell any of those for points (or points upgrades). This upgrade space is a subset of of the business class inventory. There may or may not have been availability, no one but EK will know that now.

I will say that I don't know what agreement Amex and EK have in respect of these transactions, and it may be that I'm wrong and that EK can/will make the required inventory available to Amex points transfers, but I would have found an exchange like the one you have with the initial agent highly suspicious and asked for a supervisor, or at least for her to read back what was being offered. This doesn't help you know, obviously.

I think you will need to bite the bullet and pay the charge (which is an Emirates charge which you authorised), then work with Amex to have it reversed. Others may advise differently, but I would stick to one channel of communication at Amex. This may take some time and involve people with lateral decision-making ability, rather than just policy wonks.
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