Global Adventurer

Do you want to volunteer to start the 2024 Amex Offers this year?

njdealguy

Hi I had the amex offer on my plat card for $200 off $1000 for Waldorf/Conrad/LXR hotels of HIlton that expired yesterday on 12/31 and also checked out of the Waldorf Cancun (valid for the offer) yesterday with a total room charge exceeding $1k (had to intentionally order expensive items for prior evening dinner to get to 1k hehe). But today I see they still haven't submitted the charge, dont see pending charge as of today and perhaps may submit the charge today or tomorrow. Does this mean I'm out of luck with receiving the credit or might have some luck with amex csr about the fact that we checked out on 12/31 and card was swiped on the day.

Smiley90

The T&C's of all the offers explicitly state that it'll be up to when the payment post and that they're not responsible if a payment posts late, so you're likely out of luck. You can certainly try, but I wouldn't count on it.

friedablass

Especially if the charge isn't even pending yet, the offer will not get triggered and it will be a fight to get Amex to post it manually which I highly doubt they will do given the disclaimer. The smarter thing to do would have been to ask the property to put through a charge of $1k immediately at check in (not just an authorization but a full fledged charge) towards incidentals and this way you know the offer will for sure be received as it was used prior to expiration.

Yesterday I remembered that I hadn't used a couple of Amazon 5x points offers so I quickly went to reload my gift card balance and I got emails confirming I had used the offers shortly thereafter. So even though the charges are still pending now, I know the offer has been triggered.

Smiley90

Is there a way to easily check how much of the Amazon 5x offer you've used up? I can never be bothered to do the math

friedablass

Not that I'm aware of. So I just do a $400 reload or gift card and I know the max of 2k for this offer was used up. Funds don't expire so I can just use them towards all future orders including my subscriptions. Much easier than having to keep track of your spend on the card.

Smiley90

I'll do that next time, that's much smarter. I always forget about it.

commaspace

You can chat them, they can tell you in about a minute. For any offer.

Zorak

Going off on a bit of a tangent:

I have often done this for the reasons of simplification that you mention, or similarly because I wanted to drain a gift card etc. and loading those into Amazon gift balance is convenient so that I don't have to worry about residual balances on other cards.

However it did occur to me to wonder recently, if you buy something "important" using Amazon gift balance, your only protection is Amazon's return/replacement policy and in some cases might a credit card purchase protection benefit provide better and longer coverage? So recently I've tended to use my gift balance for consumables, Subscribe And Save, etc. and checking out with a credit card for things like electronics etc. On the other hand, I can't recall the last time I claimed a purchase protection benefit, so the likelihood is probably small enough that I shouldn't be too concerned about this...

friedablass

I agree with you but the majority of my purchases with Amazon are either for consumables or cheap enough (under $50 bucks) that I wouldn't be making myself crazy with credit card protections anyway. If an item arrives damaged or gets damaged within the first 30 days, I find Amazon return process easy enough to just send it back and buy a new one. After 30 days is a problem, but it's an uncommon occurrence for me to experience an issue at that point, as the item has either been consumed or is doing fine otherwise.

In the rare event that I'm buying something expensive (threshold amount is different for everyone but for me it's about $100 and up), yes I'll use a credit card.

EasternTraveler

yes

EasternTraveler

Let's start the year off right!

notquiteaff

… with a boatload of useless to me offers

I think I got one potentially useful offer: National Car Rental, $60 for $300 spend, by 3/8/2024.

Smiley90

Same. I don't even know if theres anything new, its all.brands i dont even recognize lol.

Cmon, give me another Delta gift card offer!

Zorak

Grr, I saw this on my DL card, didn't add it right away, and now it's gone.