barrytuneup

see my post on why no 4 points!! Its in the T&A. Why bother and have someone look at the acct. Most will use it for MS.and dont need eyes on acct.

barrytuneup

for those upset with no 4% at certain rest.. just use a 2% card and do most of the spend on Gold card in grocery and rest. that dont use square. Never seen so much crying about a simple thing.. 4% works for me at all fast food places/Chinese rest and Italian rest in my town, plus take out places. Does NOT work art my NYC bagel shop who uses Toast. Simple..I dont use this card there.

dw

kesco

lax01

Crying over an advertised product that we are paying for not having the promised benefits? Yeah, its called bait and switch

gengar

"Misclassified" is impossible for me to know (and if it's misclassified, shouldn't that be AMEX's problem, as we've discussed?), but the merchants in question are a big mix. Some are 100% restaurants (AFAICT), some are nightclubs (specifically excluded by the T&Cs) including those that serve food, some are bars/pubs that serve food, one is a cafe-type place that also sells other things. But as noted, several are merchants that earn restaurant bonus not only with CSR, but with AMEX's own other products I've had like Aspire/Surpass.

And again, the main issue I have with AMEX in this case is that they're trying to have it both ways. They don't want to give out bonus points for actual restaurants if they don't MCC as restaurants, process through a non-restaurant-MCC'd merchant, or use certain payment processors like Square - even going as far as to note so many potential instances in the T&C's - but they also want to be able to refuse bonus points for certain merchants even if those merchants MCC as restaurants. To me, this is simply not a tenable stance. When there's a dichotomy between the theory (bonus points on restaurants) and the pragmatic application (how does the merchant MCC), the policy must be to choose one or the other and stick with it. Not unpredictably pick and choose and create all kinds of exceptions to the financial benefit of only AMEX.

Yes, exactly - it's the unpredictability that is the pragmatic problem. It's particularly ridiculous when even other AMEX products have given the restaurant bonus at merchants where the PRG hasn't.

rasheed

Has anyone thought about contacting Toast or Square to let them know?

Yes, I know it is probably AmEx's problem, but I am trying to see how to get the problem solved.

I get as bummed as anyone when items don't categorize properly (don't even get me started on things like bn.com not classifying as a bookstore for V/MC).

I know that it many cases (just like in the grocery category), there is some behind the scenes filtering maybe based on the actual MCC used. I don't know if AmEx will get someone to tackle the issue across the board.

lax01

Want to add more confusion into the mix? I've started using my RPG at my local coffee shop (Go Get Em Tiger) and they ONLY use square...the MCC on the AMEX site says "Category: Restaurant - Bar & Café" - it codes at 4x lol



So how am I, as the consumer, supposed to make heads or tails of what codes and doesn't code...

kesco

Updated the wiki with an * as a result of these threads.

As a bit of an aside, it's startling that AMEX hasn't noticed this yet at a higher level and taken action... they have many consumer friendly policies especially around disputes. Somewhat surprising they haven't noticed and taken broader action on this one.

rmk1825

mia

It does, if you pay with the actual card, including with the built-in Contactless feature. I cannot say how Samsung Pay may alter the outcome, because I do not have a Samsung device.

(You post does not include an attachment).

gengar

I agree that AMEX, generally, has good customer service. That's why I escalated the issue, because I have held a favorable view of AMEX and thus put a lot of charges on my various AMEX products that aren't necessarily the best accumulation of points.

But to be honest, I think AMEX long ago decided with the PRG that they were going to take an aggressive stance in order to lower the 4x bonus points they would have to give. Why else would they write so many potential exceptions (especially all those 'maybe, maybe not' exceptions) into the T&C's? Perhaps this is an overly cynical view - but why else would AMEX reject 4x restaurant bonus points for a merchant that is a restaurant and MCC's as a restaurant? There is simply no good rationale for that.

paperwastage

I used the buffet food cashier at whole foods (contactless tap with actual card)

didn't get 4x...

haven't tried the basket/cart cashiers




contactless works at other (known) supermarkets/non-toast food places and posts as 4x

gengar

I've always gotten the 4x at Whole Foods when checking out in the normal lines and using EMV. I've never tried contactless or app pay solutions.

Diplomatico

Wow, you must be really angry about this.

"A rocket-propelled grenade (often abbreviated RPG) is a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon system that fires rockets equipped with an explosive warhead. Most RPGs can be carried by an individual soldier."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket-propelled_grenade