Discover rewards question

[-Cain-]

Who sets the merchant's code? Will they give you the 5% if say a restaurant is categorized as "travel/entertainment" rather than "restaurant"?

[Anonymous]

Will definitely be interesting to see next year this time. My thing is..between hubby and I have about 20 cards. Some of the categories overap on the cards. If I'm going to use Discover over another card, damn sure skippy I'm gonna check my cashback. Aside from the double promotion, say discover and freedom overlapped..and discover gave me the incorrect cashback when I could have used the freedom and gotten the correct amount.

[-Cain-]

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@-Cain- wrote:

Who sets the merchant's code? Will they give you the 5% if say a restaurant is categorized as "travel/entertainment" rather than "restaurant"?

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Just chatted with a CSR, he said restaurants have a secondary code in there and that the system will indeed pick it up as a restaurant even if it comes up travel/entertainment. I will check next statement.

[mongstradamus]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:
I track my cashback from Discover because it's been wrong on two different occasions. And they realized their mistake and gave the correct cashback. It may be tedious every penny counts.

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Yes, seems many issuers have problems sometimes, Amex didn't give correct rewards on some grocery stores last year, and my guess is many people didn't notice (and Amex chose not to be proactive!)

On the double cash (Discover Miles and those enrolled for IT), be interesting to see how accurate that is, especially for existing card holders where the 12 months started at various times.

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next june will see if i get all those double points, we will see how it all works out , i think my discover may be my secondary card to my amex EDP, when there is no bonus categories that is. Will see how much i am able to rack up. 

On an unrelated note i am looking at amazon right now for some stuff for my trip potential 10% cash back seems pretty nice. 

[Anonymous]

I actually just got off a chat for this very thing.  My cashback balance is way off.  I've put almost all my spending through on this card, but my rewards balance has been stuck at around $20 forever.  The CSR showed that I spent about $260 in June when in reality I've spent over $1000.  The past 3 months were all off too.  I finally gave up and decided to call and talk to someone when I have more time.  If this is how it's going to work, then I'll be putting my expenses on another card instead.

[Anonymous]

Well this is rather disappointing! I was hoping maybe i was just oblivious on how to see it, even though ive searched the site a hundred times. I think since my double cb just started, i will add up all the monthly cb i get (track it each month), so at the very least i get double that number for sure. But that still doesnt address the issue if that amount is even correct.

In the future, i will be sure to at the very least calculate my shopdiscover cb, since that seems to have more issues than the regular 1% and 5% categories.

I have to say, i love my discover card! From ease of use, online chat, phone csr, and help with questions theyve been very helpful. But this sure throws a wrench in it. And it seems the times people are having the most trouble is for the bigger spends on shop disc. (Like the guy above who bought the phone).

Is it reallllly thay hard for them to have an option online to view how youve earned cb? I dont think thats asking alot.

Anywho, thanks for all the responses! I thought i saw a recent post from someone showing something from discover saying they are earning $200 (maybe in the thread about disc cb??)

[Anonymous]

Also confused as to why the exact same purchases at starbucks are coded differently. I looked back two statements and some of them literaly have no code at all, not even "entertainment ". But then a week later, the next purchase is coded correctly. Oh well no sense stressing the small stuff, for now.

[-Cain-]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Also confused as to why the exact same purchases at starbucks are coded differently. I looked back two statements and some of them literaly have no code at all, not even "entertainment ". But then a week later, the next purchase is coded correctly. Oh well no sense stressing the small stuff, for now.

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In this case, the secondary coding that the CSR was talking about should kick in

I only do the 5% categories and two recurring bills on my discover, so it's pretty easy for me to figure out what I should be getting. 

On a side note, some discover deals are cashback, while others offer a discount(no cashback), so that may be leading to some confusion perhaps?

[Anonymous]

I decided to check my statements for proper rewards. The statement ending on May 11th seemed to be short some rewards. I only used the card for dining, so it should have been an easy 5% to calculate. The funny part is that when I sent a message asking about my rewards, the form makes you enter in the transaction that is missing rewards. Well... since Discover does not allow us to see which transactions got which rewards, it is kind of impossible to fill out their form correctly, isn't it?

[kdm31091]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I decided to check my statements for proper rewards. The statement ending on May 11th seemed to be short some rewards. I only used the card for dining, so it should have been an easy 5% to calculate. The funny part is that when I sent a message asking about my rewards, the form makes you enter in the transaction that is missing rewards. Well... since Discover does not allow us to see which transactions got which rewards, it is kind of impossible to fill out their form correctly, isn't it?

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Are you sure all the places you went to were coded as dining? The problem is sometimes eateries within larger places will not code as dining, which I think Discover has a disclaimer about, like all cards with categories do.

It's a shame that Discover doesn't break down the rewards by category/purchase. It's definitely something they should consider adding because it is a major headache to sift through your statement and calculate rewards. Quite honestly I don't have time for that, and really, who does? It's crazy.