topic Re: Amex BCE reward redemption in Credit Cards

Amex BCE reward redemption

dragontears — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 14:43:06 GMT

So I have a newish BCE card (~3 months old) and was looking at the app to see if I had hit the $25 rewards amount, which I currently have $28.06 in rewards.
My understanding was that Amex let you redeem rewards for statement credit in $25 increments but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore as I was given the choice of redeeming all 28.06
When did this change?

Re: Amex BCE reward redemption

Jetboy — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 14:55:55 GMT

@dragontears wrote:
So I have a newish BCE card (~3 months old) and was looking at the app to see if I had hit the $25 rewards amount, which I currently have $28.06 in rewards.
My understanding was that Amex let you redeem rewards for statement credit in $25 increments but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore as I was given the choice of redeeming all 28.06
When did this change?

This happened in May of 2018. See discussion here.

Re: Amex BCE reward redemption

dragontears — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 15:22:09 GMT

Thanks!
That explains it perfectly, I was moving during the time that thread happen so wasn't reading these forums every day like I normally do.

Re: Amex BCE reward redemption

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 16:30:22 GMT

@dragontears wrote:
Thanks!
That explains it perfectly, I was moving during the time that thread happen so wasn't reading these forums every day like I normally do.

Yes, this was a welcome change, but there are still two bad features:

a) $25 min redemption (annoying but not that unusual)

b) rewards delayed by a month. This is (AFAIK) unique to Amex.

Re: Amex BCE reward redemption

CreditCuriosity — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 18:29:42 GMT

I think the delayed rewards by a month is the most annoying part to me... Why they have this I have no clue other than get a bit more money on interest?

Re: Amex BCE reward redemption

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 18:46:10 GMT

@CreditCuriosity wrote:
I think the delayed rewards by a month is the most annoying part to me... Why they have this I have no clue other than get a bit more money on interest?

Agreed, its quite annoying. The cynic in me thinks its to make it harder to keep track of where you are in terms of hitting the 6 K max. If you look at their new bonus tracking graph, its very difficult to easily tell how much you've spent for the year on groceries. I think this is very intentional by Amex trying to squeeze out more $.

Re: Amex BCE reward redemption

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 18:49:26 GMT

It seems like it's taking forever to get to the $25 mark, I just want to get there so i can redeem and close it. lol

Trying to reduce the amount og CC needed for rewards categories, too mnay to keep track of what to use and when, especially when i don't carry them all at the same time.

Re: Amex BCE reward redemption

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 22:29:05 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@CreditCuriosity wrote:
I think the delayed rewards by a month is the most annoying part to me... Why they have this I have no clue other than get a bit more money on interest?
Agreed, its quite annoying. The cynic in me thinks its to make it harder to keep track of where you are in terms of hitting the 6 K max. If you look at their new bonus tracking graph, its very difficult to easily tell how much you've spent for the year on groceries. I think this is very intentional by Amex trying to squeeze out more $.

It happens on the OBC too, which didn't use to have a limit. I assume it's just as CreditCuriosuty says, delaying payment by a month makes/saves Amex some money

The reward summary (on the statements tab) lists for me the total spend in that category, for the statement before the "current statement" so you do have to add both the last statement and current spend to that.