In today’s edition of Whine Wednesdays I’d like to remind our readers to consider if upgrading your existing American Express card to a higher card product is really worth the hassle.
From time to time Amex sends out targeted promotions to existing card members, offering to upgrade to a higher card tier for a certain amount of bonus points after meeting a spending threshold.
More frequently these offers are also displayed in the online account under “Card Portfolio” and when you check for pre-qualified card offers.
Last year when the pandemic started I downgraded my U.S. based Platinum card to green and really haven’t used it except for renewing my CLEAR via the credit attached to the card.
In mid March I checked my card offers and found the following promotion to upgrade to the Platinum card again:
I’m no longer eligible for any direct sign up bonuses with Amex since I had the Platinum Card before so upgrade offers are as good as it gets for me. If you never had the card product you want to upgrade to before you might get a better offer by just applying for a new account rather than upgrading.
This offer coincided with a purchase of air tickets I had to make for family members and those were to the tune of ~ US$2000 which means the spend threshold would be met immediately and i’d also earn another 10,0000 membership rewards points in the process. In addition to that there were 4 months of the PayPal credit promotion left so that was another $120 windfall.
I decided to go ahead with the card upgrade request and it was approved immediately. After this I made my purchases, paid the pro-rated annual fee for the remainder of the membership year and periodically looked out for my points. Nothing ever credited over two months so starting in early June I decided to chase Amex and ask for my 25,000 points.
All I can say is thankfully I did a lot of that over chat so that there is complete proof in the form of documentation what was communicated.
I first asked Amex before even making the charge if the amount would count towards the threshold before receiving the actual card which was confirmed by the representative.
I quoted this to another agent:
He then mentioned that charge wasn’t in fact eligible because it didn’t post in USD which is complete nonsense and was nowhere in any of the terms&conditions. I escalated it to a supervisor who came on and digged deeper:
I asked when the points would finally post and was told 8-12 weeks. The 12 weeks ending on June 22 (yesterday).
I agreed to wait and then my patience would be up. I again asked for a confirmation that the bonus has been reached and that Amex would credit the points.
Needless to say yesterday the 22 June was on the calendar and still – no points. This appears to be an endemic problem with American Express based on social media and bulletin board posts. People are complaining about this everywhere and many say they have given up on ever getting the points because they got nowhere with Amex who claimed there was “no record of the offer”.
I called Amex customer service and told them I’d like to escalate this into a mediation case with an outside entity that Amex (similar to other banks) has in order to resolve customer complaints. External mediation carries fees to the tune of several hundred dollars that are born by the institution, not the customer.
The agent then put me on hold for a good 30 minutes to research the case. By not it was a lot of documentation to go through. When she came back she genuinely apologized several times and said that not only did the system fail to properly post the points but that there was severe miscommunication by other customer care representatives. She pushed the points through manually (something previous agents insisted couldn’t be done).
I immediately transferred these points to ANA Mileage Club as I want to redeem a ticket there pretty soon and don’t want any further problems with this redemption.
Conclusion
This was pretty annoying and cost considerable time and energy to finally get my points after fulfilling all the requirements set out in the conditions of this promotion. If this was an isolated event that is one thing but there are tons of reports with Amex conveniently losing track of these offers and then sticking the customer. The entire service experience was appalling.
The only reason why I ended up upgrading the card is because for the coming year it essentially pays for itself with the $120 PayPal credit I received, the 2x $200 airline credit and the 25,000 points. I disregard the other extras extras as they’re pretty useless to me except maybe the Amex Lounge Collection for Plaza Premium.
![Airfare of the Day [Business Class] AEROMEXICO Madrid to Sao Paulo from 898€](https://cdn3.loyaltylobby.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/xbuilding-ga29091764_1280-sao-paulo-120x86.jpg.pagespeed.ic.VQ8lWfmLI6.jpg)
@sebastian More Thailand Reopening news please
I have found similar struggles chasing referral bonuses. I’ve had to chase Capital One Venture, Chase Sapphire and AMEX
The only way I even knew the person referred was approved was because it was an immediate family member in my household
Yea what I hate the most is there policy about having the agents straight up lie about it being “impossible” or “not in the system” to be able to manually post points. I’ve also had them do it manually several times, and each time after they say the same lie. I call them out on the lie and they claim, oh well it’s we just changed that today, or last week.. When in fact they are obviously never changing that. Even had managers try to claim they can’t do it.
Why not simply tell the truth and say “Sorry sir, I’m not allowed to post the points until the full time has elapsed and we have completed our investigation”
Canadian side has gotten even worse though, had one manager be honest about it and said “Well I can manually post them, but they would just get reviewed and removed”
Think both sides got a lot tighter about compensated/fixing problems involving posting points for customers since the pandemic. A couple years ago, I didn’t even have to ask, anything went wrong and they were like “so sorry, here’s a bunch if points though!”
Makes me wonder because Amex is giving out some seriously large sign up bonuses. It costs more to gain a new customer than retain an old one.
I recently upgraded my delta card from blue to gold and got the bonus points immediately upon meeting the spend. I then got an offer to upgrade it to platinum and I’m working on the spend. I’ll be curious is that bonus posts as seamlessly as the first. I’m hopeful because I really hate having to jump through hoops to get the bonus they offered me to begin with!
How can I initiate the mediation process? I researched it several times and am still unsure how I should start the process. Should I just contact the bank (in my case Citi) and let them know I want to start a mediation case?
I’ve had an Amex for almost 30 years and their customer service USED TO BE top notch. Now it’s basically gone to h*** and their CSRs are godawful. The only thing is that Citi used to be good and it’s now gone even lower….
They ought to be giving you another 5,000 points (minimum) for all the trouble you went through for what should be a routine posting of points. Based on their OWN offer.
Applied for the Platinum card last November. 100k bonus+10x on groceries/gas 4k spend in 6 months. Completed spend 3 months ago, but haven’t received the 100k bonus as yet. Got the 8-12 week spiel from 3 separate CS agents over the last 3 months.
I thought it was a glitch in their system. Didn’t realize this is the new modus operandi.
We have done several upgrades over the past few years and so far it’s been perfect.
I have been fighting for almost 3 years now to get my American Express welcome bonus. I would also like to “escalate to a mediation case with an outside entity that Amex (similar to other banks) has in order to resolve customer complaints.” where do I find a phone number to call about my case? is there some sort of ombudsman?