Discover Cashback and Refunds

[pinkandgrey]

I just had a weird thought while paying my Discover card. What would happen if one used all the available cashback and then got a big refund for the money that EARNED said cashback? Would you have a negative cashback balance? Or would Disco add it to your balance? How does that work? 

[NRB525]

Is it a concern? 

Your scenario requires three actions:

Buy a large purchase of something you many not really want. Earn 1% on it.

Points have to post to your account. ( I do not track whether Discover posts points immediately or at statement print )

Use up all the available Discover points.

Decide you really don't want the large purchase, so return it.

They key in here of course is the large purchase. The first question to answer is, does Discover reduce the earned points when an item is returned to the store? I'm not sure whether that has been tested, but I won't be able to test it  

[issac2x]

Not sure about Discover but for Cap1 I got a refund on an item and they subtracted the cashback it generated from my overall cashback balance. Though I'm not sure what would have happened if I cashed all of it out before the correction.

[pinkandgrey]

---

@NRB525 wrote:

Is it a concern? 

Your scenario requires three actions:

Buy a large purchase of something you many not really want. Earn 1% on it.

Points have to post to your account. ( I do not track whether Discover posts points immediately or at statement print )

Use up all the available Discover points.

Decide you really don't want the large purchase, so return it.

They key in here of course is the large purchase. The first question to answer is, does Discover reduce the earned points when an item is returned to the store? I'm not sure whether that has been tested, but I won't be able to test it  

---

No, it's not a concern for me. Just curiosity. Disco posts points at each statement. 

[Roger1071549]

The one weird thing they do that I found out (totally by accident) if you buy something in the 5% category, then return it after the quarter is over, you earn 5% but they only take 1%. Im sure if people started to abuse it they would change, though. 

[Anonymous]

---

@pinkandgrey wrote:

I just had a weird thought while paying my Discover card. What would happen if one used all the available cashback and then got a big refund for the money that EARNED said cashback? Would you have a negative cashback balance? Or would Disco add it to your balance? How does that work? 

---

With most of the cards I am aware of, you get a negative balance, and in fact that happened to me on a Discover Miles card.   I stopped using it for several years (after the first year 3%) but something got refunded, so I have a -28 mile balance of something (so not big!) for quite a while.    When I later PCd it to a standard discover, the negative balance got carried over.

[Anonymous]

---

@Roger1071549 wrote:

The one weird thing they do that I found out (totally by accident) if you buy something in the 5% category, then return it after the quarter is over, you earn 5% but they only take 1%. Im sure if people started to abuse it they would change, though. 

---

Sounds like poor IT!   So if you return it in the same quarter, do they subtract the correct 5%?

[Anonymous]

I think this happened to me a long time ago,  except it was for a smaller purchase. I think it was cap 1. I had a negative rewards balance but since I used the card a lot, within a few days the negative rewards amount got absorbed into the newly credited rewards and went positive. 

[Anonymous]

Interesting.. I would've assumed they would subtract the balance. I know for Cap1 they do. Not sure about whether not they give give credits for rewards used on returned items.