benolaa

I got back a form letter basically they claim this is an upgrade and everything is great. Did anyone else notice the way they now account for points is based on each transaction if they round up or down on the point as before it was rounded based on the total monthly statement amount. Amex has become very non transparent and very dangerous as who knows whats next. Wait until you get a credit card statement with an amount due and the line items do not match the total.

mia

Different doesn't mean worse. For decades American Express sent the physical signed carbon copy of every charge slip back to the member with the monthly bill. The envelopes where chubby. Then, they changed to sending scanned copies of those slips. The envelopes were thinner, but still thick. Later, they discontinued the slip based billing and sent a computer generated list of transactions. Today we think this normal, but at the time people were suspicious - because it was different. Itemizing every individual Membership Rewards transaction is maximum transparency.

lax01

Agree - but they need a filter of some type to allow you to see transactions by statement month vs. calendar month...especially since they give you "Pending Points" per statement - it only makes sense to allow you to filter that way

bgriff

My main complaint with the current MR reporting system is that they don't seem to have a clear definition of what "pending" means. I think in most places where Amex refers to pending points now, they mean "points which have been earned for spending on your current statement that hasn't yet closed." But then after the statement closes, points (usually) disappear from the pending bucket and go into limbo, until they are credited at some later time (for me, it seems to be a day after I pay for my Plat card points, and a day or so after my next statement closes on my Gold card, the traditional approach -- that it's different for the two cards doesn't help anything). They either need to add a display for points sitting in that additional pending-limbo category, or keep those points in the existing pending bucket until they actually post.

I agree that I don't think it implies Amex is descending into all-out untrustworthiness. It's just annoying.

mia

Agreed. Should be the same UI as seeing ranges of transactions which allows the cardholder to specify a range of dates.

lax01

Hmm - my pending points definitely continue to rack up under the broader "PENDING" category....but I have a section beneath it that says "Available on Payment:" - this seems pretty clear to me



You can then view the Pending points by Calendar month...as you cannot filter based on Statement month (or a date range), you cannot tell which transactions are going to move from PENDING to EARNED upon payment (easily)

Available on Payment"

benolaa

In this case it does. Can you imagine if on your regular statement they removed the ability to export the transactions as well as no longer being able to connect with quickbooks to download transactions. No reason points should be treated any differently then a statement when it comes to transparency and while Quickbooks does not track points the fact that they cant offer an export because they cant 100% guarantee how the points are being handled raises huge questions IMHO.

bgriff

As far as I can tell, that seems to be how it works for me on the Platinum card, but the Gold card is different -- Gold card points move to Points Available on Payment after statement closes, then I pay, but then the points disappear from Points Available on Payment and don't become earned until a day after the next statement closes. (I.e., the way MR points used to work, before "points accelerated" came about, at least on some cards.)

Or is that just me?

It's also possible that I'm just a month off in my Gold card points tracking but I'm pretty sure not, and if I am, I think that would have meant I lost a month of points somewhere along the line, but the current interface makes it impossible to be sure. I might need to stop using my Gold card for a month to track what happens with the points.

lax01

Do you have two different MR accounts? The Plat and Gold Reward (and EveryDay Preferred for that matter) Point Summary pages look the same to me

Points across all three of those cards move from PENDING to EARNED upon payment - Pending Points and Available Upon Payment update to reflect - this all seems to work as expected for me...

Still want the available to track points per statement month vs. calendar month though...

bgriff

One MR account, 2 cards linked to it. MR points activity page looks the same (and recent transactions list shows recent activity from both linked cards, regardless of which card I access it from) but points post differently depending on card type. https://inpointswetrust.com/2019/05/...s-accelerated/ And it doesn't seem like the MR points activity page is correctly set up to handle that, as far as I can tell.

Gasolin

With the new system, it's hard to know how to reconcile the dollar amount spent with the corresponding MR points. Sometimes there is a slight difference but it's very hard to pin point what the difference is.

Maybe I could compare the PDF statement line items vs the one in the MR summary, but that sounds like a lot of work for me then...

Edit: Actually, I looked at my statement summary and I found out some reimbursement from Uber that counted as MR points deduction... which I still find it odd because those are just Uber correcting the amounts after being notified of an abuse, It's a shame this is counted as a credit as if I returned something... when companies pay me back as a commercial gesture, that shouldn't penalize the MR points in my opinion.

mia

Why should American Express subsidize a merchant error by awarding points on the original purchase, but not reclaiming them on the refund?

friedablass

When you click on View Details under "Available on Payment: xxx" it says the following:

Points are available on payment for the Card you make payment on. If we receive your Minimum Payment by the Payment Due Date, we will add these points to your Points Balance. This typically happens 24–72 hours after the payment is applied to your Card account.

So what happens if someone doesn't pay by the due date? Is there a way to reinstate forfeited points like there was before? I pay all my cards in full by the due date every month, but it's happened in the past 15+ years that once or twice I thought I paid but due to a glitch (browser timing out or something going awry on my mobile) that the payment in fact did not go through unbeknownst to me. I didn't realize until a day or two after the due date at which point I immediately paid in full and contacted Amex to apologize and they reinstated the points as a one time exception. Even if they wouldn't do it as a goodwill gesture there was always the option to reinstate for a fee and I'm curious what happens now should this ever occur to me again (of course, I hope not, but I am human after all and the few times that it did happen is still in my bones and I would have been extremely disappointed to have completely forfeited those points).

Gasolin

Because it's not as if the value of the service purchased was any different. It's a commercial gesture, on a service that has been already paid for.

I get it if you return objects or whatever can be returned as you don't own it, but the service I received for the price doesn't disappear just because the service company decides they want to do me a commercial favor.

josephstern

My screenshots show me that I've had exactly one new transaction since the previous screenshot. It was for an Amex offer, so negative 50 points.

My balance went down over 700 points.

Love this new interface.