sbedelman

That sounded like a great idea, so I tried it. Unfortunately the three agencies blot out the last few numbers of your credit card numbers on your credit report, probably so if someone gets ahold of it they don't have your full credit card numbers.

Nice idea though.

hotturnip

If you booked a non-refundable room with Priceline (as is primarily the case), then it doesn't matter what the hotel does. Priceline is under no obligation to refund you. You made a mistake, so you suffer the consequences. (And I doubt the hotel "refunded" Priceline. Priceline's procedure is to provide the hotel with a one-time-use card #, which is charged for room/tax only upon checkin. So there would be nothing to refund a month in advance of your original reservation.)

sbedelman

The ticket was booked directly with United. It was a full fare, fully refundable Y ticket.

seenitall

But you know the last 4 digits. Look at the AMEX cards listed in the credit report. Toss out the ones for which you do know the whole number or which you know are still active. I assume that there should only be no more than 2 or 3 remaining ones. Then contact AMEX and say you believe the card number that received the refund is either XXXX XXXX XXXX 1234 or YYYY YYYY YYYY 1234 or ZZZZ ZZZZ ZZZZ 1234. That should be a narrow enough set of choices for AMEX to comb through.

sbedelman

As I said Amex can't find any card associated with me ending in the four digits United has provided however that would be the case for a card that was closed and fell off the system.

We know the refund was made to an Amex card because United says that's what they did and provided the last four digits for the card. There is no reason to start checking other cards as there is no dispute as to what account United credited. The problem is that they know the full account number and no one else does so there is no way to figure out where the credit went without some additional information from United.

United has never asked me to prove I didn't get the credit. That would make no sense. I'm not asking them to give me another credit, I'm asking them for the information necessary to figure out where the credit they issued went to. I'm sure they issued a credit. We just have to find what account it went into to.

I don't think that I ever said that United sent the refund to the wrong place. I certainly didn't mean to say that. I'm just trying to figure out where they sent the refund so we can find it.

sbedelman

I checked all three credit reporting agencies. I found 9 reported Amex cards on one of them and 11 on the other two so the list the agencies have isn't exhaustive. But in addition the numbers from each of the two agencies showing 11 cards don't fully agree with each other so it's clear that the history doesn't include all your cards. Not surprising given that if I remember correctly unlike Visa/MC every time you get a new card from Amex the number changes slightly.

This piqued my interest so I decided to see if my Amex Business Gold was shown on my credit report. It wasn't.

So while it would have been a good idea if all of your credit cards were there it isn't going to work. Besides, this whole matter could be instantly resolved if United would just provide the reference number for the transaction. That's the reason reference numbers exist, so one can locate a given transaction.

But I'll pass the list of numbers to Amex. It can't hurt. Thanks for the suggestion.

scottsam66

Seems you have all the answers. All suggestions are rebuffed by you.

joe_miami

I had a good idea of where this was going even before I read the above, which sort of confirmed it for me. Eleven Amex cards? This sounds like one of those Reddit tricks where people sign up for credit cards to get the bonuses and then buy refundable airline tickets so they don't actually have to spend the required amount of money to get the bonus.

Even if my hunch is wrong, the story doesn't add up. There's no way Amex has already purged the records of a credit card closed no more than two years ago.

JVPhoto

Isn't that what manufactured spending or churn n burn or whatever it is called?
11 CCs in a few years seems very excessive unless each one was issued a new number due to fraud...several times. But then I'd worry about my online CC habits.

joe_miami

I don't believe Amex is one of the very few issuers that creates a new account/new credit report entry after a card is compromised.

sbedelman

Nobody said over a few years. The suggestion (see post #14 ) was to check my credit report since that would "contain information (including card numbers) of all of your credit cards since time immemorial."

So those eleven Amex cards are over a much longer period.

Nobody said the credit card was closed less than two years ago. I don't know how long ago the card ending in the number United gave me was closed. We're still trying to figure out if that is one of my accounts.

As for as this being a trick I've been flying for business since the late 1970's, have got over a million butt in seat mile on UA, am a two million flyer with AA, have never purchased a ticket in my life that I didn't intent to fly and my flyer talk ID is my real name. If this is a scam I'm a pretty stupid scammer.

You are welcome to think whatever you like but your conclusion is based on two assumptions. One, that it's improbable for someone more than sixty years old to have eleven Amex cards in his lifetime credit report history and two, that I claimed that Amex purged their records after two years, which I never did.

joe_miami

Unless something strange happened across all three reports, your credit reports should show all opened or closed credit cards from the past 7 to 10 years. Any closed cards older than that should have fallen off your reports by now.

The average American has two credit cards, total, on his or her credit report, so eleven from one bank is well above average by just about any standard.

As for Amex purging records, you've lost me there. Just how long ago did you buy this ticket? If United refunded to a closed card that was actually yours, Amex assuredly should have a record of that old, closed card. And if United somehow messed up and refunded the ticket to some other person's card, then there's obviously nothing for you to find in a credit report.

sbedelman

Then I have well over the number of cards of the average American. Which I suspect is true of many, if not most, business people my age who spent a significant part of their working life on the road.

Your question of how long ago I bought the ticket is a good one. I didn't think it mattered since it was fully refundable but I'm going to search my emails for confirmations from United and see if I can find when it was initially issued.

jsloan

Most tickets -- even refundable tickets -- are good for one year from the date of issue. UA must have continually cancelled and then reissued your ticket. I'm surprised that neither you nor they ever suggested refunding it in full and then waiting until your plans were more concrete before rebooking, if only to clear up the record.

Assuming that all of your Amex cards were in your name, I can't understand why Amex would no longer have access to that information. They should have noticed a large refund made to an inactive account and contacted you / issued you a check. Barring that, they should have refused the credit and UA should see that. There really shouldn't be any way for this credit to end up in limbo like you're describing -- although it wouldn't surprise me if it took UA a few days/weeks to figure out that the refund attempt failed.

Pardon the silly question, but is there any chance that your client / business partner / whomever you were to meet purchased the original ticket? That would certainly explain the situation.

Note that I would not expect first-level CS reps to have access to the entire credit card number even if they wanted to read it to you. If they're not able / willing to read you the reference number, I would send a fax or letter to the refund department and ask them to trace the refund. You can find their contact information on the refunds page.

Good luck!

narvik

I would source the original $3200 charge from old credit card statements, scan that in as a PDF, send it to United with the question: "Is this the account you credited my refund to? If not why not?"