Discrepancy Between AmEx BCE Spend & Refund Rewards

[Varsity_Lu]

I only use BCE for online purchases: 3% at Amazon, Walmart, REI, Home Depot, etc.  My wife has been shopping for a mother of the bride dress on Amazon and has been making a lot of returns lately.  Here's what I've noticed: we get 3% on the purchase, but AmEx only claws back 1% on the return. She bought a dress for $142 that earned $4.27 in rewards, but only lost $1.42 on the return. That's a net of $2.85! This happened for me on an REI purchase as well. I bought something online and returned it in store. I got 3% on the purchase but only lost 1% on the return. This is like free money, right? 2 bucks for every 100 spent & returned.

Anyone else notice this?

[GZG]

It's been like this for as long as I can remember 

Any attempts to scale your newly found free money empire will be ended swiftly by the Amex RAT squad that tracks for people trying to game this to their benefit

[FicoMike0]

Good find @Varsity_Lu .

I'll have to watch for this bonus. I don't return a lot of stuff, it may be awhile, lol. Last return I remember was to rockauto, they have me a refund and told me to keep the part!

[bs1234]

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@GZG wrote:

It's been like this for as long as I can remember 

Any attempts to scale your newly found free money empire will be ended swiftly by the Amex RAT squad that tracks for people trying to game this to their benefit

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I wonder why they mess up the refund clawback like this.   I don't return very much but all the issuers that I have returned on have correctly removed bonus points as well.   Seems like Amex could fix this easily enough

[Varsity_Lu]

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@bs1234 wrote:

I wonder why they mess up the refund clawback like this.   I don't return very much but all the issuers that I have returned on have correctly removed bonus points as well.   Seems like Amex could fix this easily enough.

My guess is that it has to do with fact that the BCE gives 3% for online purchases but only 1% for in store purchases. REI would fall into this scenario. They probably can't differentiate between which type of return is happening. Not sure why Amazon would be different.

[bs1234]

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@Varsity_Lu wrote:

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@bs1234 wrote:

I wonder why they mess up the refund clawback like this.   I don't return very much but all the issuers that I have returned on have correctly removed bonus points as well.   Seems like Amex could fix this easily enough.

My guess is that it has to do with fact that the BCE gives 3% for online purchases but only 1% for in store purchases. REI would fall into this scenario. They probably can't differentiate between which type of return is happening. Not sure why Amazon would be different.

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When you return something they must match it up with transaction X on that card.  The system should "know" what rewards were on transaction X and be able to reverse them.   There shouldn't be a need to guess if it's in store on online, except in the unlikely case you bought the same cost item both ways.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Varsity_Lu wrote:

I only use BCE for online purchases: 3% at Amazon, Walmart, REI, Home Depot, etc.  My wife has been shopping for a mother of the bride dress on Amazon and has been making a lot of returns lately.  Here's what I've noticed: we get 3% on the purchase, but AmEx only claws back 1% on the return. She bought a dress for $142 that earned $4.27 in rewards, but only lost $1.42 on the return. That's a net of $2.85! This happened for me on an REI purchase as well. I bought something online and returned it in store. I got 3% on the purchase but only lost 1% on the return. This is like free money, right? 2 bucks for every 100 spent & returned.

Anyone else notice this?

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No it's not free money. It's a mistake on their part. And I don't think it's a great idea to take advantage of it.

[Varsity_Lu]

@SouthJamaica 

Yeah, I'm definitely not deliberately taking advantage of it. We've only had the BCE a few months and we have only made a few returns in it in the last month. That's when I noticed it. And I was trying to be funny with my free money comment. 🤷🏽‍♂️ I'll work on my humor.

I think what I will do in the future, at least with Amazon, is to have the refund on any return go back to my Amazon account rather than my card. There's not much I can do about the other stores. I don't return a lot of stuff, so I don't think it will be a problem with RAT anyway.