uppereastsider

Statements and activity --> Year to date activity

Diplomatico

One thing I've noticed is that GrubHub can be a bit deceptive. When you are browsing restaurants, you see "no minimum required." When you click through to the restaurant, there is suddenly a minimum $$ order.

Someone mentioned it upthread and I'm not sure if it's demand based (i.e., during peak hours the minimum is invoked) but it's def something of which users should be aware.

Happy

When Statement closed on 11/27, the following GC purchases did not earn 4x -

A $25 GC bought at Cheesecake factory (they had a 2 bonus cards each for 1 free piece of Cheesecake with each $25 GC purchase, as its Thanksgiving promotion each year) did not coded as dining nor receiving statement credit.

A $50 GC bought at Carrabba's (with 2x $10 bonus cards) also was not coded as dining.

I called AMEX ON 11/29 to inquire why they did not earn 4x. The rep did ask whether they were GC purchases and I told him yes because of the Thanksgiving bonus offers from the chains. He did not go further but offered 2 solutions as I posted upthread - $20 statement credit as Billing Adjustment, or 1600 MR pts. I took the statement credit. I have poor experiences for courtesy MR pts being posted correctly or posted it at all. An AMEX statement credit reversal now is under dispute, the customer relation supervisor cited with my reasoning after she went over the account, and said to give me 2,975 courtesy pts to compensate my trouble (being transferred 4 times before eventually got to her, based in Atlanta). A few days later I saw a 2,379 courtesy points shown on my account - why this number. I have no clue. Meanwhile a guy with heavy Indian accent called me on Friday evening about this dispute, but the call was disconnected within the first 5 min of call and he never called back. With AMEX such convoluted posting of MR pts, I much prefer the clean / clear, a credit adjustment and be done with it.

Does anyone see how we earn points on AMEX monthly statement? I cannot find a single mentioning of such on either online or paper statement. The only way to find out is to check the Membership Reward account - this is just too much work for cardholder to do, especially when AMEX makes errors which are not uncommon these days.

On 11/30 I noticed the online statement changed - both restaurants now indicated as 4x. Also $10 statement credit from Cheesecake posted with 11/25 date (the date of the purchase of GC).
On 12/01 $20 CR ADJ FOR BILLING INQUIR posted.

So the $25 Cheesecake GC purchase on 11/25 did not generate a statement credit until 11/30, and was after I called and the rep went over it. After that, both GC transactions changed classification to earn 4x, 3 days after statement closed, and the $10 Cheesecake statement credit showed up. Hard to tell whether it was just a time delay or it was the result of the rep's action.

The pending points from the Nov 27 statement also changed - now it treated the 2 GC purchases as 4x restaurant. Before it wasn't. Who knows how such POST STATEMENT changes occurred. It is just crazy.

mia

You cannot accurately see all of the points earned on this statement until a few days after the NEXT statement is generated. Then, and only then, will you be able to see a full list of bonus points earned. What you can see now may still change.

Happy

Neither Chase nor Citi would change their reward points after awarded with few exceptions they added as courtesy.

Another AMEX only quirk that makes AMEX membership reward cards hardly worth the trouble to me when one of the few useful transfer partner is on the verge of major devaluation (Aeroplan).

mia

The points have not yet been awarded, they are pending. Other issuers do not have this phase.

hkcj

The $10 credit did end up posting against Shake Shack. It was an $11 gift card purchase.

uPantcho

for anyone who frequently goes to a place that does not code as a restaurant, you can go to chat and complain about it (assuming it register as a 'restaurant' in the details).

i did this twice already. they setup a claim with membership rewards and 1 or 2 days later you will receive a call from a amex toll-free number. they just confirm all the places where the issue is happening and the next time you stop by it will register as 4x.

note: the 2nd time i made the call the CSR wasnt willing (or didnt know how) to help. he claimed that 'we dont have control on how it registers', then copy pasted some random things such as restaurants outside US not registering, he also said that 'bar & cafe' doesnt count, and another one that i dont quite remember. after 2 mins of counter arguing (one other place that register as 'bar & cafe' that gave 4x points, a previous place that was 1x and now it is 4x, mentioning the restaurants are in the us...) he finally gave in and started the membership rewards claim.

TLDR with enough pacience, some time in the chat and one phone call you can convert all restaurants to 4x points. i just have to test if this is to my account only or global. https://i.imgur.com/tT6jR3Q.png

lax01

Weird...I got a 6-8 week investigation period when I used the Online chat - and they said I'd have to check back in to get a status - they wouldn't call. Maybe I will reach back out and check status on the request for investigation

klanfa

On the topic of wrong categories and bonus MRs - I dined at a restaurant called "Hotel Chantelle" in NYC. Absolutely nothing to do with a hotel (stand-alone restaurant), but category was "lodging". A simple Google search reveals that's indeed the case, but Amex didn't seem to care. Opened an investigation (chat) and was that everything was correct - lodging it was and no bonus MRs for me. Should I even bother ringing up MR department or? (given that some people have had success here)

gengar

Edit: Sorry, completely misread the post.

Diplomatico

I think the point is that the restaurant is named "Hotel Chantelle" but is not in a hotel and is not even remotely connected to a hotel. The owners simply chose to name it as such.

Hotel Chantelle

klanfa

That's exactly right, and that's the advice I was looking for.
Seems to me like MCC was automatically assigned (if that's possible?) based on the name, and nobody at Amex seemed to care when I pointed it out.

gengar

Understood. MCC's are not "automatically assigned", nevertheless it's possible that somehow the MCC was mis-assigned by someone at AMEX during the initial process. Based on my experience with payment processors, it's more likely that the merchant would have to straighten this out - nevertheless, it may still yield results if you contact AMEX directly.

rasheed

It is AmEx's policy that MCCs cannot be incorrect. AmEx does not want a restaurant to be misclassified as a hotel. Clearly, the hotel part of the name is what has screwed it up for the setup. You can report that the restaurant is classified as lodging, but it has no lodging of any kind. However, I wouldn't report it on the sake of trying to get the MR bonus, just perhaps helping another customer in the future.