I just spent some time with a supposedly live agent on a Citi chat trying to resolve an incorrect merchant coding issue. I spent $400+ at a restaurant on my Citi Prestige card and was only awarded 1X points instead of 5X. Since this was a large charge I tried to see if they could help via chat. No dice. They can't fix the incorrect merchant code (they were coded as "merchandise - misc"), and they wouldn't manually award me the missing points. Told me to call the Thank You Rewards Service Center, which I can try tomorrow as they have limited hours.

Has anyone else tried to resolve this type of issue with Citi? I obviously have no control over the merchant code nor prior knowledge of any errors. In this case, the establishment is a restaurant and nothing but, so it is clearly an incorrect merchant code.

Also, I normally only do a cursory check on my statement to check that my charges are awarded the proper bonus points, but on this statement I checked all of them and found yet another (small) charge with incorrect coding. Leads me to believe this is possibly more widespread than I thought. Almost want to yell "class action" but I'll hold off for now

Have you contacted the restaurant to ask why they submit their transactions as "merchandise -- misc." rather than as "restaurants"? Or do you believe that the restaurant is submitting the transaction properly, and that Citi is screwing up?

Merchant codes (MCC) are selected by the merchant's acquirer, the company that processes their card transactions. It's unlikely that any customer facing staff at the restaurant will have any knowledge of this topic. Every card issuer experiences this problem if they offer category bonuses, because some merchants are misclassified, and it's not something the card issuer can control. Citi explicitly tell us this in the card terms:

So it's the card processor that assigns the codes, or Visa/Mastercard? If it's the former, then if the establishment changes processors then the code could change? In any case, the cardholder gets screwed if there's a misclassification, and it sounds like we just have to suck it up.

Here's the establishment in question: https://www.playahermosaoyster.com/

Hard to see how this could not be classified as 'restaurant'.

Not always, it sometimes goes the other way and bonus points are awarded at a merchant that should not qualify. In any event, the owner's identity is on the website. It's possible she is using a merchant account from one of her other businesses, but if you can find a direct contact for her you could reach out and explain that your credit card is showing that this location is not classified as a Restaurant. ("Merchandise - misc" may not be the actual merchant classification, Citi aggregates similar codes into categories as explained in the terms.)

There is a 'contact us' email form on the website. I sent in a note explaining the issue. Not gonna help my situation, but if they fix it at least other future guests won't have the issue.

Do people submitting expenses for employer reimbursement ever have problems with blatantly miscategorized charges?

i usually submit receipts, so the mcc doesnt matter. mcc can be "wrong" due to a variety of reasons. some of them are legitimate, such as restaurants in hotels may code as hotel due to how it was set up or some walmart stores code as discount stores while others code as grocery stores, which neither is wrong strictly speaking, but just inconsistent and not good for some of us

Different employers have different Travel&Expense policies, though. In a previous life long, long ago I worked on an enterprise expense entry and audit/approval solution that integrated with credit card issuers and basically was able to import the transactions for an employee to then submit as part of an expense report. Depending on the customer’s configuration, expense types were derived from the credit card fees for each transaction and may or may not have been manually overridable. And paper receipts, then still very common, were not always requested by audit departments, especially for transactions on corporate cards.

Is there any incentive for merchants to *not* have the correct MCC assigned to them, or is it generally a case of “who cares”?

to simply answer your question, i think acquirers do try to make sure merchants have the right mcc on a "best effort" basis. but there are just too many ways that it can go wrong, and the best effort isnt actually much because it isnt profit making. even in a country like japan, i have seen restaurants coded as automotive or computer services or real estate

when i set up an online merchant account for my mum to sell her handicraft, the mcc is whatever i declared and nobody checked. i dont recall the specifics, but i remember that the mcc is wrong as the selling platform only allowed a subset of mcc available and i couldnt find one that i thought was right. and when my brother started selling some other things via the account later on, he was advised that we dont need to change the mcc as my mum was still selling her handicraft, although my brother was selling way more than my mother by then. idk if this is what usually happens with a traditional acquirer or that these 3rd party platform/payment service providers have just made the situation worse

there is also no standard definition for each mcc category, so it is subjected to interpretations and sometimes visa and mc give different mccs

in terms of whether merchants have incentive to falsely declare their category, i am not 100% sure, but did hear that certain types of merchants are deemed more high risk and may pay higher interchange

Without going off topic too much, the merchants usually get to decide/change their codes. Also many larger merchants do have different categories assigned to different terminals. So if that�s a restaurant you frequent, probably won�t hurt to ask them directly.

I�ve had minimum luck when the incorrect MCC causing a reduced bonus. I believe I was able to get TYP customer service to throw me some courtesy miles once or twice. Never had any luck with Amex (�we will talk to the restaurant to make sure they have the correct MCC�) or Chase.

The only exception is IHG spending on my Chase IHG cards. Some properties have weird MCCs and Chase have always credited me the correct amount when I send a message.

To follow up: called TYP Customer Service. Agent escalated to a supervisor, who then awarded 'courtesy points' to make up for the incorrectly coded restaurant purchase. PITA, but worth it in this case since it was a rather large restaurant bill.

Be aware that these are classified as Taxable Points, and there are restrictions on how they can be redeemed. In particular, they cannot be Transferred to airline or hotel programs, and they cannot be Shared with other cardholders.

Wow, that's bogus, especially since they were to account for missing bonus points on our Citi Prestige card, which are transferable.

On a side note, we have a few thousand of the 'taxable' points left from when we earned them from our Citi checking accounts. It is really difficult to find out how many of these points we have, however. The TY website 'points summary' doesn't show anything. It used to be easy to see these points as there was a 'points expiring' link, or something like that, but it appears the website has changed.