topic Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points in Credit Cards

Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

Time2letgo — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 04:30:36 GMT

One of the biggest perk for me why I love the Business Platinum card is the 35% Airline Bonus when you pay for airline tickets with points on amextravel.com.

With that said, in November I was sent an offer for the Personal Platinum with a 100K MR with a $5,000 spend, I gladly accepted and met the spend right away. Before the first statement cut, the bonus points were already posted. Just in time for me to go shopping

So this is how I messed up. I purchased 4 tickets in Nov using a total of 257,395 and selected my Personal Platinum instead of the Business Platinum. What the heck!!! Did I just throw away over 90K MR points by not using the right card? Banging my head cause I cannot believe that I made such a costly mistake, or did I?

Just as I'm beating myself up I checked my MR activity details and noticed that the 35% bonus for the first 2 flights posted to the account. Now I'm at a lost, more confused than ever, how is that even possible? Am I missing something here? Did Amex make a mistake? Is it gonna get reversed? As far as I know, the Personal Platinum does not have this feature, even Amex CSR confirmed that, so why did I get the credit? Could it be because I have both cards and both cards has the same airline as my selected airline of choice so it doesn't matter which card is used since the points are all in the same account? Am I going to receive the remaining bonus later for the other flights that were purchased the same way, using the same card 2 weeks later?

If anyone can shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it. I'm too nervous to speak to Amex anymore about it because before I realized that I got the bonus I called to see if the tickets could be switched to the business card instead of the personal since technically no money was spent and I was basically told nothing could be done, be more careful next time. Got off the phone disappointed and started going through the points activity and that is when I realized that the Bonus had in fact posted 2 days before for the first two flights.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

K-in-Boston — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 04:35:01 GMT

I don't see that it would be completely out of the question for it to work this way if you have both cards. My question is are you also receiving 5 MRs per "dollar" that the Membership Rewards credited?

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

Anonymous — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 04:36:28 GMT

Maybe since the business platinum was your first one and ostensibly has the most use, they view that as the 'primary' card for your MR account so the redemption defaulted to the Business Platinum? I dunno, I mean I know with Chase your car earn UR points separately and you have to transfer them over to your Sapphire to use them through the Sapphire.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

Time2letgo — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 04:42:17 GMT

@K-in-Boston wrote:
I don't see that it would be completely out of the question for it to work this way if you have both cards. My question is are you also receiving 5 MRs per "dollar" that the Membership Rewards credited?

I don't think it would qualify for the 5X points since it was a points purchase.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

K-in-Boston — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 04:46:03 GMT

@Time2letgo wrote:
@K-in-Boston wrote:
I don't see that it would be completely out of the question for it to work this way if you have both cards. My question is are you also receiving 5 MRs per "dollar" that the Membership Rewards credited?
I don't think it would qualify for the 5X points since it was a points purchase.

When you redeem for airfare, a charge is placed on your personal Platinum Card just as if you had actually charged it. The points are taken out of your account, and usually within a couple of days you'll see a statement credit for the amount of the points redemption. Because of the way they handle that, unlike other travel credits like on CSR, you still earn 5x MRs on airfare! If you got both the 5x and the 35% points back, that's really nice.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

Time2letgo — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 04:47:28 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Maybe since the business platinum was your first one and ostensibly has the most use, they view that as the 'primary' card for your MR account so the redemption defaulted to the Business Platinum? I dunno, I mean I know with Chase your car earn UR points separately and you have to transfer them over to your Sapphire to use them through the Sapphire.

It's basically the same with Amex, the MR are earned from whatever source card but the points are all in the same pool so when you go to book the travel you have to enter or select which card you want to use. So it post as a charge to that card and then the MR credit post so it becomes a zero $ transaction.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

Time2letgo — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 04:51:31 GMT

@K-in-Boston wrote:
@Time2letgo wrote:
@K-in-Boston wrote:
I don't see that it would be completely out of the question for it to work this way if you have both cards. My question is are you also receiving 5 MRs per "dollar" that the Membership Rewards credited?
I don't think it would qualify for the 5X points since it was a points purchase.
When you redeem for airfare, a charge is placed on your personal Platinum Card just as if you had actually charged it. The points are taken out of your account, and usually within a couple of days you'll see a statement credit for the amount of the points redemption. Because of the way they handle that, unlike other travel credits like on CSR, you still earn 5x MRs on airfare! If you got both the 5x and the 35% points back, that's really nice.

Ok, I'll watch out for that. I'm still kinda new at this, learning as I go along.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

K-in-Boston — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 04:52:31 GMT

Example of how points are treated when used to make some or all of a purchase with Amex. Each of the one-way Delta Comfort+ tickets was charged individually and earned 5x MRs. Then the MRs I used for the transaction offest the charges with a credit for $410.08

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

Anonymous — Sat, 22 Dec 2018 05:55:52 GMT

your fine, the policy doesn't say you have to use the Biz Platinum to pay for it, just be a cardholder. it's all about the wording in the T&C.

1. you are a Business Platinum Card Member and you redeemed points for airlines per T&C, you get the 35% back.

Business Platinum Card Members will receive 3.5 extra points for every 10 points they redeem for either a First or Business class flight on any airline, or for flights with their selected qualifying airline using Membership Rewards Pay with Points through American Express Travel (35% Airline Bonus), up to 500,000 bonus points per calendar year, per each Membership Rewards account.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

Time2letgo — Mon, 24 Dec 2018 18:49:03 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
your fine, the policy doesn't say you have to use the Biz Platinum to pay for it, just be a cardholder. it's all about the wording in the T&C.

1. you are a Business Platinum Card Member and you redeemed points for airlines per T&C, you get the 35% back.

Business Platinum Card Members will receive 3.5 extra points for every 10 points they redeem for either a First or Business class flight on any airline, or for flights with their selected qualifying airline using Membership Rewards Pay with Points through American Express Travel (35% Airline Bonus), up to 500,000 bonus points per calendar year, per each Membership Rewards account.

Thanks for the clarity on that, I'm relieved. Too bad Amex reps were not able to tell me this, would have saved me some stress. But it makes perfect sense. Appreciate all the responses from you and all others as well.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

red259 — Mon, 24 Dec 2018 19:18:58 GMT

I normally use points for high end redemptions, but I have the amex business plat. Given the recent AF rate hike I am strongly considering ditching the card where before that I had already decided to keep it. Never used amextravel.com with points. How do the airline fares price out with amextravel.com vs purchasing the tickets from other sources? Is there a markeup in price, because when I search out the same exact flights on other websites I notice amex travel is more expensive on most of the flights I checked. Really lowers the value of this option to me if they are going to charge me more to use my points.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

K-in-Boston — Mon, 24 Dec 2018 19:24:49 GMT

@red259 for SkyTeam flights, I've found them to be identical to booking directly with Delta, Aeromexico, Air France, and (although not SkyTeam, a very close Delta partner) Virgin Atlantic. One thing that's important to point out is that Amex Travel shows the complete price with taxes included, while some airlines and OTAs show the pre-tax fare.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

Time2letgo — Wed, 26 Dec 2018 16:21:06 GMT

The prices are the same as directly with the airlines. I have found sometimes that there may be a few flights not listed on Amextravel that is showing available on the airline's website, but I take it that it is only when the seats are extremely limited. There are also times when I find flights that are discounted if paying with points, and that's without taking into consideration any bonus or extra points calculation. For me, it's so worth it.

Re: Amex MR 35% Airline Bonus: Pay With Points

red259 — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 23:33:23 GMT

@Time2letgo wrote:
The prices are the same as directly with the airlines. I have found sometimes that there may be a few flights not listed on Amextravel that is showing available on the airline's website, but I take it that it is only when the seats are extremely limited. There are also times when I find flights that are discounted if paying with points, and that's without taking into consideration any bonus or extra points calculation. For me, it's so worth it.

Just doing a preliminary search I found this not to be the case repeatedly. The price difference is normally not huge but I often see amex charging me $15 to $20 more than what I can get directly from the airline. I looked at the taxes etc and figured all that in. Maybe its because I am looking at international flights vs US domestic flights, but I rarely fly US domestic so I wouldn't normally be booking those flights anyway.