Based on personal experience and DPs over at FT (starting with post #71), it looks like some American Express premium charge card cardholders who made a purchase from American Airlines (AA) on January 9 were charged twice—the charge appears pending as a single charge but posts as two charges for the same amount. This appears to only have affected the Premier Rewards Gold, Platinum, and Business Platinum cards. It was first noticed in the context of $100 AA gift cards (cardholders were charged twice while only buying & receiving one gift card), but also affected lower denominations (h/t Dan), actual tickets (h/t Del and C), and fuel surcharges (h/t Justin). It appears that charges after January 9 are not affected (h/t MJC). As of January 12, everyone should’ve received a credit from American Airlines on their card for the balance of the second amount:
You’ll also notice that the posted charges are coding differently than previous AA gift card purchases:
My suspicion is that either American Express screwed something up or that American Airlines changed the way they process payment (or payment processors), and that this was an unfortunate, but temporary, side effect. Fortunately, all DPs indicate that people are still being reimbursed for gift card purchases, so I don’t think there’s any concern about this being related to the new Rewards Abuse Team, or that this will affect airline reimbursement in the future.
The interesting bit is that duplicate charges did get reimbursed by the airline credit (if you had any remaining for the duplicate charge). Functionally, this means that the amount of the duplicate charge reimbursed by the airline credit has been converted into a statement credit—which is damn nice! We don’t yet know what American Express will do about this situation, but my pipe dream is that they’ll leave well enough alone given the small cardholder base affected by this situation. We’ll update you as soon as we know!
You can drop your DPs in the comments and can review our post concerning what to know about American Express’s airline credit here.
Fully Updated: I have re-worded much of the post in light of comments & the situation being resolved. If you are confused by the comments or just curious, the original text of the post is below. (hopefully I can figure out how to collapse it at some point!).
Based on personal experience and DPs over at FT (starting with post #71), it looks like American Express cardholders who bought $100 American Airlines (AA) gift cards starting January 9 were charged twice while only buying & receiving one gift card. The charge appears pending as a single $100 charge and then posts as two $100 charges. According to reader Dan, it also affects lower denominations. Whether this affects purchases after January 9 remains to be seen—we won’t know how gift cards bought January 10 post until tomorrow.
The double charge affects both the Platinum and Premier Rewards Gold cards, and FT users who’ve contacted AAÂ have been told that AA is working with American Express to fix this problem.
If that news weren’t bad enough, the posted charges are coding differently than previous AA gift card purchases. Previously, the merchant would be appear as “AA MISC SALE/ TAX/ FEE/EX BAG 4510742 – DALLAS, TX”, and the charge’s details would show a doing business as (DBA) name of “AMERICAN AIRLINES E TKT” and a document type of “MISC. CHARGE ORDER (MCO)/PREPAID TICKET AUTH.” under Flight Details. The double charges show the merchant as “AMERICAN AIRLINES 45107425 – 800-433-7300, TX”, and the charge’s details show a DBA of “AMERICAN AIRLINES” and a document type of “ADDITIONAL COLLECTION”.
My (barely founded) suspicion is that American Airlines has changed the way they process payment for gift cards, and that this may affect airline reimbursement in the future. The worst case scenario would be that American Express’s Rewards Abuse Team is in full swing, but I consider that unlikely.
Given reader JR’s DP, it looks like the double charge does use up the airline credit—twice, if you had $200 left like me. For now it’s best to play a waiting game to see how the double charge gets resolved, then evaluate how this will affect your airline credit.
You can drop your DPs in the comments and can review our post concerning what to know about American Express’s airline credit here.
