Zorak

1. You paid $X for something, and now have a balance due of $X on your card.

2. You used Real-Time Rewards to redeem $X worth of Flexpoints. The points are deducted and in exchange USB credits you $X and you now owe $0 on your card.

3. You cancel the trip or whatever. The merchant credits $X back to you. You now have a $X credit balance on your card.

So think about the situation for a second and ask what it is you think they owe you. (1) and (3) cancel each other out. (2) is, effectively, an unrelated transaction between you and USB that enabled you to redeem some number of points for some amount of statement credit. For the purposes of this discussion (2) is utterly irrelevant, and utterly unchanged, by either (1) or (3). (Of course, practically speaking, USB makes (2) conditional on (1) happening first, but again just talking about who owes what to whom, it's irrelevant)

If that's too wordy to follow, just think of it this way: after (3) you are now $X ahead of where you were after step (2).

Not sure why people find this (and similar discussions about the CSR $300 travel credit) so confusing, but...

lkar

If that's how it works, that's great. But if you read above, that's not what yugi is saying. My original question was basically whether you get the points back or you get the cash back. According to posts above, before real-time rewards and before flexperks had a fixed value, you'd essentially get your points back in proportion to your redemption. Now, it's much easier since it's a fixed 1.5 cents and also the likelihood of getting refunds is much higher now, because you can redeem for all sorts of travel including stuff that is more likely to be refunded than flights. Datapoints used to be few and far between, because most people redeemed flexpoints for nonrefundable tickets, so really the only datapoints were for cancellations in the first 24 hours. And, for those who were cancelling, they were cancelling with the airline to get the credit and take advantage of the fixed redemption tiers.

If refunds are now done as cash credits instead of points then that is a significant program enhancement. It essentially means that you can redeem flexpoints for 1.5 cents for anything. Just use the card for a refundable travel thing, redeem a real time award, cancel, and have the money refunded to the card.

So, again, I'm wondering whether what happens now when you cancel a real-time award. You say you get a cash credit. Yugi says nothing happens and that you get no refund. Yugi's not a verbose guy so many he's really saying the same thing you are, but it would be interesting to have a datapoint if anyone has one.

Actually, I may just go ahead and do a rapid rewards redemption and pay the $5.60 with my flexperks card and do a real-time redemption and then cancel the ticket and refund the $5.60 and see what happens as a test.

ENOTTY

Anyone know if the Real-Time Rewards will pay for Amtrak ticket at the 1.5cpp rate?

yugi

You will have $5.60 credit on your account. In the terms they say that they will not reverse your credit of RTR if the purchase is returned.

lkar

vladml

Wow, this bank is nuts! First, I had to call to add my card to Samsung Pay - the rep said they ask everyone to call since it's less secure (?), which does not make sense to me. Every other bank has the option of text or, at least, e-mail verification. They put me through the usual authentication steps (full card number, last 4, zip) then proceeded to require ADDITIONAL security in the form of naming two recent charges, dates, and amounts on the card? Really? I did not have my account open and was not near a computer - am I really supposed to remember these things? The exact dates of purchase?? These guys should look into working for the feds!

lkar

Just confirming that a refund from travel purchased using real-time rewards was in fact reimbursed in cash and not points, as those above suspected.

This is a pretty good development. Basically, you can get 1.5 cents toward anything with flex points. I had a bunch from 3x charity donations, but I think I'm just going to use real-time rewards to book things I can cancel to cash out.

yugi

I already cashed all my 40k of flexperks.

brownie20

any datapoints on claiming the $25 airline allowance for one way tickets with the new system? if not i'll report back after my upcoming trip this weekend!

Blind and Green

DoC states that US Bank cards are churnable.

Any recent datapoints on how much time to wait after closing a Flexperks Visa?

I opened it in Sep 16 and closed it Sep 17. Should I reapply now or wait?

Thank you!

dukerau

Does the $25 airline fee allowance apply to a Real Time Rewards redemption?

yugi

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't

MisterBill

You cashed them in using the redeem for points/refund tactic or were you just telling us that it didn't apply to you? It's certainly an intriguing way to cash out, given that I only have 18k or so points in my account and would love to get rid of them.

yugi

I used book - redeem - refund method. It works perfectly with both Altitude and Flexperks. Since I mostly use Altitude, I transferred residual to there, and then cashed.

ThePointsCollector

So with this new auto feature lets say I book a $1300 flight but only have $1200 to cover with points. will they apply partial credit to this?