ethanwa

I just booked a hotel using 20,000 points for $400 reward using Google Chrome browser. Worked perfect the first time. Immediately logged into my account and 20,000 points were gone as expected. The $400 was posted to my account within a day or two.

I can ALWAYS make the redemption selection appear on Google Chrome but never on Safari on my Mac anymore.

I think the issue also seems to be with flights only. I booked a flight last month and still don't have my redemption for that. I might just say "screw it" and use my rewards for a hotel I need coming up in SF in June instead.

Here is the quote from the email they sent out a few weeks ago:

AUDirt

My father-in-law was told by a phone rep that they had quit doing flight redemptions. Personally I don't believe this, but I will be watching this with great interest.

I doubt Barclays is smart enough to have a rep monitor this thread, but if so, here is a message to them:

If you get rid of flight redemptions my $100k annual spend will be gone. It's that simple. If I wanted a card that could only be used on hotels, I'd get a hotel-specific card.

bluto

Online travel agents like travelocity.com make a lot less booking flights than hotels so I guess I wouldn't be surprised if this were true. This might be the only way they can affords the ultra generous terms of the old 2x card.

AUDirt

I've always thought the 2x card was too generous and never understood how they could possibly be making money off it. Still, I don't have need of a generic hotel credit card and if I'm going to have a card that only gets me hotel credit, I will go with the SPG or Hilton cards. I haven't done the math, but the USBank FlexPerks card is another card I may consider using more.

Let's view things from the other perspective for a moment, though.

They've been having a terrible time with flights on the card lately. Transactions have been posting as delta.com, american.com, etc. instead of Travelocity. It's easy to imagine the flight redemptions breaking when they can't even internally track which tickets were purchased through travelocity.com. I suppose it's possible that these are innocent technical glitches and not a harbinger of a change to the program.

Still, I tend to think Bluto's suspicion is correct.

BC300

Wow! You are playing with fire! Good luck on getting your fee waived AND keeping your current reward structure!!

AUDirt

I thought I would post the answer to my own question.

For those that are curious, I successfully redeemed points for a car rental. The credit has already shown up in my account. This was a car rental by itself -- no flight, hotel, or any other package.

In this case, the promotional materials were accurate.

HenryMay

I booked a flight on Feb 8 and everything looked fine. I was presented with an option that allowed me to use my points to pay for $400 of the flight. Then my statement came with no credit applied to the cost of the flight. The CSR told me it would take 7-10 days for the credit to appear. I'll give it to the next posting date before I cancel the card...

bluto

Out of curiosity, I logged into travelocity.com with chrome today and the option to redeem with points showed up correctly. It had disappeared for me a few weeks back. So perhaps they have fixed things. I didn't complete the purchase so I don't know if the points would have shown up as a credit on my account, though.

AUDirt

I purchased a ticket and redeemed points on February 14. To-date, no credit has been shown on my account and my points have not been deducted from my account.

Add to this the conversation my father-in-law had with a CSR in which they told him that flight redemption was to be discontinued and I'm about ready to burn my points ASAP.

Bluto, I saw your post in the FlexPerks thread. I have both cards (the 2x/$ Travelocity card and FlexPerks) and, in terms of redemption, the Travelocity card was waaaay easier.

Of course, that was then...

paramount

I have purchased 3 trips in the past 2 weeks. One I was able to easily redeem 400 credit which showed on my credit card statement prior to the actual package charge. 2 other charges I was able to see the redemption but chose not to use it.

Having no problems over here.

AUDirt

Were these just flights? Or were they flight+hotel+car kind of package trips?

The problem, at least in my experience, seems to be limited to flights. See my earlier post in this thread -- in back to back days I was able to successfully redeem points for a car rental (huzzah) but not for flights (boo).

FWIW, I can always see the option for redemptions. The issue is whether or not those redemptions on the statment when they're used.

drbobguy

Still doesn't work for me. I tried deleting the card, logging out, loggin back in, and re-adding it. I've still never seen any option to redeem points even once. Maybe my account is just FUBAR'd. I called and emailed a month ago, not sure what else I can do at this point.

g50

I talked to Barclay's customer service about four days ago. They told me they are having a problem with flight credits and they are trying to fix it. I was given a case number for four flights and was told I should see a credit in 7 to 10 days. I booked another 6 flights two days ago. We will see if I have to call again.

I use chrome and check to use points option. No problems with hotels.

AUDirt

For what it's worth, it appears that they're willing to handle these cases by e-mail. I wrote them an e-mail through the mytravelocityrewards.com portal and received the following message in return:

Dear AUDirt :

Thank you for contacting us regarding your Travelocity Rewards American Express Card. We can certainly address your concern regarding the rewards on your account.

We understand your concern and apologize if you have received anything less than superior service from us. We strive for excellence and appreciate the time you have taken to provide us with this feedback. We have escalated this to the proper department for review. The Case XXXXXXX will be your reference. This will be resolved in 7 - 10 business days, maximum of 30 days. We will appreciate your patience while waiting for the resolution.

If you have any other questions and concerns, please reply to this message.

Sincerely,

Customer Service

AUDirt

To follow-up on my previous post, I'm a long-time cardholder (grandfathered 2pts/$ card) and have redeemed thousands of dollars in rewards with Travelocity. Despite all of this, flight rewards are broken for me. The button is there and I can select my redemption, but it will not impact the transaction.

I recently tried and failed to redeem points for a flight. (See previous post.)

I e-mailed CS and got a form letter back.

Finally, yesterday, my reward was processed.

So, for the moment, it appears that they'll keep handling this manually. I would like them to get this fixed soon, though, as the ease of redemptions was (once upon a time) one of the great features of this card.

Also, I still can't shake my fear on what they told my father-in-law about them doing away with flight rewards soon. On the other hand, Barclays seems to have a single CS pool and a dozen different cards, so perhaps the agent simply got confused about program details.