topic Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals in Credit Cards

Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

Shadowfactor — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 23:15:20 GMT

Waiting for an admin to review the link I sent them from Reddit for approval for posting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/cbuf0q/discussion_thread_july_11_2019/etjpnaq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/cc18gz/amex_mr_clawback_thread_71119/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=churning&utm_content=t1_etjqhbc

Huge claw backs of MR points for self referrals. This was a wide spread thing over many travel hacking groups with lots of people touting how great this was and encouraging others to do the same.

It was extremely stupid and now Amex RAT has started to crack down. People are getting the bonuses clawed back and some are loosing their accounts altogether.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

FinStar — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 23:17:52 GMT

Thanks for the DPs and intel @Shadowfactor. It lasted while it did for many that were able to use that method, but not surprised that AmEx's RAT would eventually clamp down. I think there were some rumours floating around that this wasn't going to be sustainable and it was a matter of time before the other [AmEx] shoe dropped.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 23:23:14 GMT

aye, can't say I didn't see this coming. People were too bold.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

CreditCuriosity — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 23:32:42 GMT

Wonder if that is why one of my amex gold card referrals has yet to hit my account and it was legit(old boss) from about a week back on his approval? Will cause a stink after another few weeks if not

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

kdm31091 — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 23:32:28 GMT

This was inevitable and people only have themselves to blame honestly. Everyone in the credit world knows the RAT team has been in place for quite awhile now and obviously self referrals weren't going to fly under the radar. Can't say I really feel bad for anyone in this scenario as this was clearly gaming the system.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

CreditCuriosity — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 23:42:30 GMT

In all honesty this was such a simple programming fix for amex to perform you wonder why they haven't closed this loophole vs having this backlash --- smh.. I agree it wasnt smart for people to do at all, but i suppose greed obviously took over, be interesting on the tax issues for said reported bonuses on taxes on how all that will be handled, what a mess

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

gdale6 — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 23:43:40 GMT

This is why I never trust a bank with their rebate programs, as soon as they can be redeemed they are redeemed nothing is carried for long in my rebate accounts. I detest one way "we can do what we want" agreements.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

coldfusion — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 23:55:38 GMT

In reading the threads it's pretty clear that the whales are the ones being targeted. The smart ones already knew to cash out their MR ASAP and be ready to bail on AMEX if their accounts suddenly showed a negative balance.

It's part of the game. If you don't know how to play at that level eventually you're going to get burned.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 02:41:13 GMT

This is hardly a surprise. I was wondering why Amex allowed this for so long. P1 to P2 referals make sense but that was just playing with fire.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 02:58:17 GMT

I was reading some military guys blog where this was this trick. Seems Amex waives annual fees for active Military. So he would get Amex Business Green after Amex Business Green. That card waives the annual fee the first year and only has a 5k sign up bonus which he wouldn't get. So he would call in as soon as the card was approved and have the card upgraded to Amex Platinum with a 50k upgrade offer. He said just keep doing it over and over again. I thought that was wrong because Amex will eventually stop waiving annual fees for active military.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

CreditCuriosity — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 03:24:23 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I was reading some military guys blog where this was this trick. Seems Amex waives annual fees for active Military. So he would get Amex Business Green after Amex Business Green. That card waives the annual fee the first year and only has a 5k sign up bonus which he wouldn't get. So he would call in as soon as the card was approved and have the card upgraded to Amex Platinum with a 50k upgrade offer. He said just keep doing it over and over again. I thought that was wrong because Amex will eventually stop waiving annual fees for active military.

sad he was taking advantage of a company that waives AF for military as they arent obligated to do so, but doing so in good faith as he/she is serving our country. Yet he/she takes advantage of an already sweet deal.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 03:24:37 GMT

@coldfusion wrote:
In reading the threads it's pretty clear that the whales are the ones being targeted. The smart ones already knew to cash out their MR ASAP and be ready to bail on AMEX if their accounts suddenly showed a negative balance.

It's part of the game. If you don't know how to play at that level eventually you're going to get burned.

Right! Despite some of the angst in the reddit thread, I would guess that everyone who played knew that this was a possibility and determined it was worth the risk. If they just take the self-referral points, people really aren't worse off, though I guess there is some talk of account closing.

Peoples belief as to what is OK varies! I for one are always surprised by some people here who talk about getting credit scores by signing up for the $1 trials, then closing, then resigning. To me, that just screams abuse and may lead to the service dying, but clearly others think it's OK because it is allowed. Same here with self-referrals, till it wasn't!

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

wasCB14 — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 04:37:14 GMT

If it had been Cap1 or Barclays allowing self-referrals, I'd have probably tried it. The last two Amex cards I got were BBP and Delta Platinum, though, and I liked them too much for long-term use to have done anything that dubious.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 04:45:24 GMT

@wasCB14 wrote:
If it had been Cap1 or Barclays allowing self-referrals, I'd have probably tried it. The last two Amex cards I got were BBP and Delta Platinum, though, and I liked them too much for long-term use to have done anything that dubious.

Amex has too many good cards to mess with them like this. It is pretty obvious they would eventually get around to fixing it. And they are known to take back points for Obvious things. Amex is the only card company I would be worried to do this with.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

Anonymous — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 04:50:13 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@wasCB14 wrote:
If it had been Cap1 or Barclays allowing self-referrals, I'd have probably tried it. The last two Amex cards I got were BBP and Delta Platinum, though, and I liked them too much for long-term use to have done anything that dubious.
Amex has too many good cards to mess with them like this. It is pretty obvious they would eventually get around to fixing it. And they are known to take back points for Obvious things. Amex is the only card company I would be worried to do this with.

Lets see what the fallout is. My experience, pre-RAT I guess, when Amex closed my OBC for MS, I was allowed to open another one just one month later (and maybe earlier, that was the first time I tried). I lost a lot of reward dollars because I didn't know about trying to get them accelerated, but in this case it looks like people have only lost some points.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

NRB525 — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 07:04:32 GMT

I guess the teaching moment is, if one does a lot of referral bonus, one gets a 1099 from AMEX for perceived value? That alone reduces some incentive.

With the improved regular earnings on Gold and BBP, that makes me wonder at what these folks were expecting to gain. I am glad to see AMEX taking steps to close loopholes. It should help sustain the program for my spend habits. I have 200k MR from legit SUB and earnings, 200k Delta, and 80k UR as I try to burn points from other programs and get focused on fewer.

The Reddit poster getting a 10k Delta self-referral is amusing. Why even bother?

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

Blackswizz750 — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 12:31:08 GMT

**bleep**, makes me not want to send referrals to my family. This is part of the tightening from lenders.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

CreditCuriosity — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:14:43 GMT

This isn't tightening from lenders if is lenders being Amex in this case stopping something that has cost them tens of millions of dollars in revenue as sites likes reedit and other blogs this has been around along time and if you have read the comments on them 1000's if not 10k+ are doing this and each self referral cost amex lets say 100 dollars, that adds up pretty quickly. It was abuse pretty simply. Obviously it was never meant to be used this way being referrals and people that say sure it was won't keep a straight look on their face for long.

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

CreditInspired — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:16:29 GMT

A question:

Since AmX is clawing back MR points, what happens if someone already redeemed 50K points and their point balance is now 0? Will they have to pay those points back ($500)? If yes, then this really is going to be a big mess!

Re: Major Amex clawback related to self referrals

Shadowfactor — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 13:41:08 GMT

@Blackswizz750 wrote:
**bleep**, makes me not want to send referrals to my family. This is part of the tightening from lenders.

I haven’t seen one data point where they clawed back anything relating to family referrals even a spouse or roommate.

Its a valid referral.

This is from people referring themselves for cards. Amex isn’t going to pay out a welcome bonus plus a referral bonus when you decide to signup for a new account.