Some American Express Cardholders Double Charged by American Airlines on January 9 [Fully Updated 01/12]

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:


AA Credit

You’ll also notice that the posted charges are coding differently than previous AA gift card purchases:

AA Previous Charge

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 AA 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.

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Frito Pendejo
Frito Pendejo (@guest_337892)
January 12, 2017 12:50

This happened to me Jan 1st/3rd. End result is one $100 AA gift cert, and a $100 account credit. Good deal indeed!

Biggie F
Biggie F (@guest_337940)
January 12, 2017 14:55

This is quite an interesting DP …

First, that this happened as early as 1 January…

Second, that it has been over a week and apparently no clawback of the (second?) $100 account credit.

Just so I understand, when you say, “This happened to me Jan 1st/3rd,” do you mean that you did a $100 purchase on Jan 1st and saw it post as two charges, but then saw one of those two charges taken off, yet two $100 credits on the 3rd?

Mark
Mark (@guest_337883)
January 12, 2017 12:34

I purchased on 1/10.
Good thing is only one single transaction posted today.
Bad thing is that in “Benefit” section, the available credit is NOT changed any more. Wonder if Amex fixed this since 1/10?
Keep finger crossed!

albspoint
albspoint (@guest_337907)
January 12, 2017 13:22

im in the same boat for 1/10 for the first 100 gc on plat. no change in benefits tab. will update more tomorrow to see if any change.

the charge just posted today and under Document Type, it now lists. “Additional Collection”

hope the reimbursement goes through!

Albspoint
Albspoint (@guest_338301)
January 13, 2017 08:52

Just got the 100 reimbursement today 1/13.

MilesCollector
MilesCollector (@guest_337832)
January 12, 2017 10:03

Doc, I am planning to buy AA or Delta GCs as I have few PRG and PLT cards. Should I wait for this to settle or go ahead and jump in? Any advise will be appreciated.

Will
Will (@guest_337829)
January 12, 2017 09:51

Bought one $100 AA egc on 1/9, charges were double-posted but reimbursed this morning. What’s interesting though is that I got the $100 reimbursement twice. Perhaps the second one will be clawed back, but for now, I essentially have a $100 statement credit without needing to purchase the second $100 AA GC.

Former Chase Banker
Former Chase Banker (@guest_337820)
January 12, 2017 09:22

Platinum:

1/9 – Purchased $100 AA GC, trans double posted.
1/11 – AMEX reimbursed one trans, AA reversed the other (backdating to 1/9)

MJC
MJC (@guest_337841)
January 12, 2017 10:30

You say the reimbursement was 1/11, but you didn’t see it until 1/12 (today), right? Just asking because I purchased 1/10 and was expecting a reimbursement today, but I guess it will be tomorrow.

When I purchased last week under the different coding it would have been reimbursed today.

Thanks!

MJC
MJC (@guest_337842)
January 12, 2017 10:31

I also DID NOT get double charged, I guess only the double charges happened on 1/9.

Former Chase Banker
Former Chase Banker (@guest_337849)
January 12, 2017 10:50

Correct. I didn’t see the reimbursement and the reversal until today.

Jeff
Jeff (@guest_337805)
January 12, 2017 08:55

DP: BOUGHT 2 AA $100 Egypt cards 1/9. Was double charged (4×100). Today 2 of those charges were reversed and I also received amex 2×100 reimbursement

Jeff
Jeff (@guest_337808)
January 12, 2017 08:56

AA* not Egypt

Matt E.
Matt E. (@guest_337804)
January 12, 2017 08:54

So I received the “merchant credit” of $100 back, with a post date of 1/9 (to match the charge). I then received the usual “Amex Reimbursement Fee” of $100, with a post date of 1/11 (today) as I had originally hoped when placing the order.

This was my 2nd round of $100 purchase, so my activity shows 3 separate $100 charges, 1 $100 credit and 2 $100 reimbursements, net $0 and $200 of GC.

All is back to normal 🙂

Maury
Maury (@guest_337784)
January 12, 2017 07:48

This happened to me when buying Delta $50 gift cards with the Amex Delta Gold card. I was later reimbursed.

Mark R.
Mark R. (@guest_337695)
January 12, 2017 02:30

Here’s a (somewhat?) encouraging data point for everyone: I purchased 2 x $100 digital AA gift cards; they posted on 1/9 and both had double entries (i.e. $400 charged to my AMEX Platinum). They also appeared as, “AMERICAN AIRLINES 45107425 – 800-433-7300, TX”. In the past, I’ve been reimbursed 2 days later (today is 1/11), but so far there’s no *posted* reimbursement (i.e. $-100 credits). However, when I view my $200 Airline Fee Credit under the “Benefits” tab, it says: “You have exhausted the $200 Airline Fee Credit for this current year. The $200 Airline Fee Credit will be available to you again starting Jan 2018.” The wait continues… // (As a side note, I purchased a $100 digital Southwest gift card on the Premier Rewards Gold card. It posted with a date of 1/01 and received reimbursement on 1/03 — no issues there)

Mark R.
Mark R. (@guest_337699)
January 12, 2017 02:41

Thanks for the insight. Enrouraging to hear the credit eventually posted.

Mark R.
Mark R. (@guest_337866)
January 12, 2017 11:45

Update: Double posts were reversed and the gift card charges were reimbursed. All is good!

William Charles
Admin
January 12, 2017 19:58

Good DP

LG
LG (@guest_337687)
January 12, 2017 02:06

Platinum:

charge and clear 1/4, 1/6

PRG:

charge 1/7, clear 1/9

Looks like I’m in the clear.