lovetravellingoz

Unfortunate??? LOL no not at all. I am quite happy with my average spend of $10 Australian per tx. Besides bonii were awarded on the number of tx and not on achieving any minimum amounts.

If a US$2 strategy worked for you, then great. However we both gained very nice amounts of bonii and I would assume we are equally happy.

However for me:

1/ Yes I could have achieved a much lower average if I wished to if that was my only objective...and I dare say if you calculated the average $/tx on the 1.8 million extra points that I put through compared to your tally you would find a very low $/tx

2/ Amex is a great card and earns more points per $ than other cards. Therefore why would I not put my normal larger tx on it (though as mentioned earlier with my Earth Amex having a promo starting after the Everyday one of 3 points per $, I used that for my very large tx)??

Amex was my preferred card and well before this promo I put all "normal" cc spend on it. I only use my "free for life" Citibank VISA which only has a an earn rate of 1.0 point per $ (compared to 1.5 on Amex) when the business will not take Amex, or has too high a surcharge for using Amex compared to VISA..

3/ The point of the exercise was to get the maximum number of tx. I had bills that had to be paid. ie Telephone, rates, power, water etc etc...not putting them through on the Amex would have cost me 1000 points per bill....and as they were due they had to be paid.

3/ Risk Mangement.. From day one, my strategic view was that I would earn a huge point balance and thus would be put under a lot of scrutiny by Amex. I therefore resolved to while making LOTS of transactions to not just make tiny tx. Last thing I wanted to risk was to spend over 100 days making tiny tx, just to have Amex disqualify me after the fact. To me it was not worth the risk. And as it turned out Amex did suspend me while they investigated my spend and then re-instated me after I justified all my tx as legitimate. So I am very happy that I was prudent.

lovetravellingoz

Indeed...

The first weekend was just a buzz. I just kept thinking WOW..another 1000 points at each tx. It was like printing money The adrenalin was rushing and it was all pleasure................my normal aversion to shopping overcome by the buzz.

But then that faded a lot.

Each shopping trip (Points Run) then became a bit like a visit to the Dentist.

You dreaded going, but knew you had too...and suffered through the visit waiting for it to be over. However in this case it was visiting the Dentist daily and often several times per day

One would wake up in the morning and in particular on the weekends thinking...did I really have to go shopping??

I did try and distract myself where I could...and make a game of getting tx in as quick a period as I could. I would seek to do my "circuit" of a particular shopping centre or group of shops as quickly as possible. To make say 20 purchases in an hour when things went very well would give a certain level of satisfication.

Then again when the shopper in front of you dawdled with incessant "price-checks" or other ways of being slow my frustration would start to boil as I would be thinking I could be "earning' tx elsewhere.


I had one particular store that I vistied 3-7 times per week where the one particular cashier (and they often only had the one register open and so you could not avoid him) always dawdled. Infuratingly he would take ages to try and open plastic bags etc...So with my being a "regular" I took charge. No longer content to wait for him I instead scanned my items whenever I shopped there (the assistants were meant to do it), and directed him to just look after the register and to cease and desist with the plastic bags!!!!!!!!!!. After a few training trips he settled into the groove

Pat89339

Well done lovetravellingoz! Personally, I would have loved to shop every day and generate multiple tx a day! I'm glad you kept your eye on the ultimate prize and hung in there. Thanks for posting the report on FT!

Barcky

Looks like you had a much better variety of food than pudding!

Mrp Alert

From one points collector to another - Bravo. I have done similar runs for Rewards Network promotions or car promotions, but this is just juicy! Post of the year!

toomanybooks

Hey, if you ever make it to Chicago, PM me and I'll take you out for some of our local beers!

adamak

Wow. Great job, new pudding guy.
Maybe some day they'll make a movie about you too. Enjoy your RTW.

Landing Gear

Congratulations lovetravellingoz! ^^^

I am curious. Would it have been possible to do something like this?

1. Go to gas (petrol) station. Swipe card at pump.

2. Buy one gallon.

3. Replace nozzle. Take receipt.

4. Swipe card again and do the whole thing over and over for ten gallons to earn 10,000 miles.

lovetravellingoz

No...Amex would have disqualified you for multiple tx.

Indeed I got suspended for a while for " spend that may have been suspicious " as were many others in the promo. I was only re-instated after justifying all spend. It is also pretty clear that anyone in the promo that gained largish amount of points has had their spend closely eaxmined.

In the example you gave there would be no reasonable explanation for buying gallon of gas (in my case a lite of petrol) ten times in a row. That would win you free pass out of the promo...and not just that but also possibly loss of any existing points in MR as well as being kicked out of MR so that you could not gain any future MR points, and remember that Amex is the most generous CC program around.:

However Amex were careful to not define it exactly, probably knowing full well if they say said 5 a day was ok that everyone would then max out of 5 a day per store.


So with my spend the test for me was could I reasonably justify each spend?

If not then do not do it....after all there were big bonii to be gained.

But it meant you had to do the hard yards...one tx ata time.

Though at least I did have some easy tx as I had a few regular monthly bills which were automatically done, and so no grunt-work required for those..

http://www.americanexpress.com/austr...ints_faq.shtml

Unfortunately we've identified cases where Cardmembers have been found to have intentionally manipulated transactions in order to obtain additional bonus points. For example, splitting a bill that would normally be paid as one transaction into dozens of smaller transactions.

We will be reviewing all activity covered by the offer to identify cases of suspected misuse. Cardmembers who are found to have acted inappropriately risk forfeiting any points earned through the promotion and/or cancellation of their Membership Rewards account.


So part of the drama of this promo was that the rules were not 100% defined and clear cut and the risk (and fear) of being disqualified was constantly there.

Landing Gear

Thanks for the details.

I think I would have enjoyed the program. I'm the guy who negotiated the resolution of the "cheese for American Airlines Miles" promotion after the company changed the rules without notice. This earned lots of FT'ers millions of miles. (I'd prefer not to say how much I earned but it was nowhere as impressive as your achievement.)

lovetravellingoz

Also Posted on the 19th Sept:

Luisa Megale, VP for Public Affairs & Communications at American Express asked [frequentflyer.com.au Admin] to post this note on her behalf…

Hi guys

It’s Luisa from American Express here. I’ve asked [frequentflyer.com.au Admin] to post this message on my behalf.

I have been reading with interest the discussion about our bonus points offer. I’m happy to confirm that it is a legitimate offer. As it has been rightly pointed out, the intent of the offer is to encourage our Cardmembers to get out and use their Cards. Particularly in the thousands of new businesses we have signed this year.

I just wanted to let you know that the offer will be restricted to Cardmembers who received the invitation in the mail; and Cardmembers who are currently enrolled, even if the offer was not intended for them.

We will be reviewing all Cardmembers who registered multiple times and limiting their enrolment to the original offer, or the offer they would have been eligible for had they been invited to participate.

It’s great to see you are so excited about the benefits of using your American Express Card, but unfortunately there are limits. I have been disappointed to read some of the posts suggesting abuse of the offer. We will be reviewing all spend activity related to the offer to identify cases of suspected abuse. Cardmembers who are found to have acted inappropriately risk forfeiting any points earned .

Sorry to end on a low note. But we love how enthusiastic you guys are about your American Express Cards and encourage you to get out there and spend. While I will continue to read - or is the right term lurk - with interest, I’m not planning popping up here regularly.

Luisa

So those that had been flagging paying bills in small increments, or visiting supermarkets to buy many boxes of matches one at a time, were given notice that this would not be "legitimate" spend.


Initially the promo was launched with extremely brief T&C. This was later tightened up somewhat per the link in my last post, though the T&C even then were still vague.

Landing Gear

Unfortunately, it's impossible to make a professional comment on this without knowing both Australian law and the actual text of the offer terms.

Kagehitokiri

mother of god. you lucky aussies!

lovetravellingoz

I was asked for more detail on the beer run.

I must admit that I did not keep notes but off the top of my head a few aspects are mentioned below. Firstly for those yet to visit Australia beer and wine are the dominant alcoholic drinks. With beer there are quite a number of large breweries, as well as hundreds of boutique ones. Many overseas major brands such as Steinlager or Heineken are freely available.

For my Beer Run I was mainly sampling beers that I have not tried before and so I in the main avoided the beers I had already new. As it was also very much a Points Run, I also in the main avoided the more expensive beers (which I will get to on another day). For this reason I did not buy too many Japanese beers.


A new favourite:

It was great to be able to try so many new beers and many from countries that I had never been to including Columbia.

I had never had any Polish or Czech beers before and I found these in the main to be quite good.

Zywiec (Polish) was a particular favourite that I bought a few repeats of. Crisp and light in flavour and in a slightly larger bottle (500ml) it was a beer that my wife particularly liked and we would often share a glass from it each.


Others:


If you enjoy dark beers then the Czech Kozel is well worth a try.

Quite a cheap beer was a German Pils Beer Oettinger. This too became a favourite. In part as it was quite cheap (though more than Aussie Beers) an in part because I enjoyed it's flavour.

Another cheapie with a light flavour was from El Salvador was Cerveza Cantina.

The Scottish Schiehallion (500ml) is certainly worth a try as well.

Naturally I revisited a lot of USA beers, Bud and the like. But one new to my tastebuds was the Michelob Ultra. It was quite different, almost sweet but a nice beer none the less.

From further north came the Canadian Moosehead which also went in to the buy again category.


Relived Travel
In travel many things link in the experience. Apart from sights and sounds taste and smell are central to our memories.

I know that for example that whenever I drink Russian Caravan Tea it always instantly transport me back to my Treks in Nepal and the shared laughter of sitting around joking with the porters, or Didis, while sipping hot black, but smokey flavoured tea.

For this reason it was great to reprise my travel memories by grabbing familiar friends such as Chang, Singha and the like. Past good times came flooding back with each sip.

lovetravellingoz

Well the actual original text of Terms and Conditions were not much bigger than a postage stamp.

Here is the original offer (though my postcard was 5000 for every 5 tx):

http://www.frequentflyer.com.au/comm...10k-points.jpg

Yes breathtakingly brief!!!!!!!!!!! That is the complete T&C shown at right. Believe it or not!!!!!!!!!!!!! However in addition to this there were the general T&C of the Amex MR Program.

However if you look at any other Amex Promo before or since, they always have a complex set of T&C. How this promo got through to the public without the type of T&C that Amex would normally have was stunning.

So not only did Amex err here in having an amazingly generous bonus rate, but they has virtually non-existent T&C !!!!

So we had HUGE bonus rate.
No minimum spend
No limit to the bonus you could earn..and indeed when I rang to check that my registration was valid the CSR's without me asking anything reeled off those magic words....No minimum spend and no limit to the bonus you could earn.......and then no conditions (well not yet anyway apart from the general MR T&C. They came later when Amex went into damage control)!!!

Then add to this that they initially allowed anyone to register and not just those sent the invitations and you have a litany of woe and mistakes by Amex....and opportunity for some.

Later in September a new set of T&C was posted up on the Amex website,

Revised T&C:
http://www.americanexpress.com/austr...ints_faq.shtml


but oddly Amex never bothered to write to all those registered in the promo to let them know. The new T&C were to the best of my knowledge never promoted in any way unless you contacted Amex yourself.

For example they never advised me of the new T&C despite the fact that I was registered and was obviously shall we saw an active user of the promo!!! The skeptics thought that this was deliberate so that people could just be disqualified for breaching tightened T&C that they did not know existed.