Update: People are being told this is for returned merchandise, even when they haven’t returned any. No idea what’s going on.
Contents
What’s Happening?
There are some reports of people who signed up for the American Express Platinum bonus when it was 100,000 (that also had their points frozen) having their points clawed back. It seems that most people who’ve had their points taken back engaged in some sort of manufactured spending and American Express claims they failed to meet the minimum spend requirement.
Image via flofloflo2 on /r/churning
American Express Terms
American Express clearly excludes some purchases from counting towards the minimum spend. The fine print states:
he following charges do NOT count towards the Threshold Amount: fees or interest charges; balance transfers; cash advances; purchases of travelers checks; purchases or reloading of prepaid cards; or purchases of other cash equivalents.
Data Points
Let’s take a look at the data points to see if manufactured spending is what triggered this point adjustment or not:
Had points clawed back
- Engaged in MS: 1, 2, 3
- American Express claimed it was from returned merchandise: 1
- Didn’t engage in MS
Didn’t have points clawed back
Our Verdict
This is kind of interesting from American Express, first they froze the points then they waited until after the three month minimum spend period was over before clawing back the points. It’s not 100% clear if manufactured spending was the cause of this or not and whether there is any chance of the points being readded to the account, at this stage it doesn’t look good.
The other question is will American Express be cracking down on this type of spend across the board? Or is this just a once off to show that they were unhappy with this link going public? There is also a data point on Flyertalk about American Express not considering the different varieties of the Platinum card separate products. Share your data points in the comments.
Hat tip to /r/churningÂ
