Travelwithgrant posted screenshots of his new Amex billing statement which includes new terms to exclude cash equivalents and person-to-person payments from being eligible to earn points. The change is found thus far only on Membership Rewards-earning cards, though it might be spreading to other cards like SPG as well.
We are updating the list of transactions that are not eligible purchases and for which you will not earn points by adding: purchases of cash equivalents; Person-to-person payments.
They’ve also clearly exclude Amex gift cards purchased online from earning points.
You can find the Amex Membership Rewards terms here. This is what they look like now:
And this is what they looked like in 2015Â (it’s possible some of the changes came along the way):
‘Cash equivalents’ refers to Visa/MC/Amex gift cards and perhaps bill payment services as well. It probably does not include a closed-loop gift card to a particular merchant, e.g. an Amazon gift card. Interestingly, they specifically mention that American Express gift cards purchases online (meaning direct purchase from Amex) will not earn points; this has never been the case in the past and is pretty surprising given that you can simply pay with a non-Amex credit card instead.
The person-to-person exclusion will limit things like Venmo or Paypal peer payments from earning rewards. It’s a bit of nuisance since the card rewards can help offset fees when paying a friend. Going forward, it’s probably smarter to pay with a no-fee option like a bank/debit, or else to use a non-Amex card.
Of course, all of this this is only language in the terms. In reality, it’s possible nothing will change from a coding perspective, and they’ll just use the new terms to clawback rewards on a case-by-case basis. (The ‘reloadable prepaid cards’ has been in the terms for years, as pictured above.) Certainly purchases at CVS or the grocery will earn points, but they could manually review and exclude purchases of $505.95, especially if they have level-3 data at that merchant.
Regardless, the RAT team is clearly hard at work. Previously they focused primarily on tightening their terms regarding signup bonuses (we rounded these up in this post), and now they are targeting regular rewards.
I just looked at two more of the cards offer terms (BCE and Hilton Ascend) and it looks like the person-to-person language is on those as well. So it may have spread to all of them now. I did not see the Amex GC language on them, however.
I have 3 charge cards with them and 2 credit cards, but they only sent me this notice for my EDP, which I MS the 6k every year. Any of you guys have the same situation where they only sent you this notice for the card you hit the hardest?
So I tried to make a tax payment on pay1040.com using my new spg business card. Transaction failed. I called AMEX to inquire and rep said the denial code indicated the purchase of this type of item was prohibited by the card sponsor (spg). Then I went to another tax payment site and attempted the same payment with same card and it was approved (albeit with a slightly higher convenience fee). Transaction is still pending but I will monitor whether it receives points when the billing period ends in April.
So, will we be able to use Bluebird and/or BMO account funding to meet MSR on the SPG biz 35k/7k offer? I’m not sure I can do it without these options.
So MPX no longer counting?
I’d guess merchant gift cards will still work, but hard to say anything for certain.
I checked with Amex to see if i meet spending requirement, and representative said you have $2kish left to go, i was like whatttt? She said PPDG purchases doesn’t count, and i argue with her that I bought those stuffs from ebay and it’s being processed by Paypal. If it’s for real, then I’m going to STOP using AMEX cards.. TOTAL overkill to me.
The terms linked to in the post don’t say anything about merchant GC. However, the terms for my Amex ED (approved this week) specifically mention “purchases of gift cards (presumably merchant GC included?), person-to-person payments” as not counting for the SIGNUP BONUS. The terms say nothing about gift cards or p2p for ongoing points earning. For those of us recently approved, I wonder if they’ll have to honor the older terms for a period of time?
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Amex god have mercy on MPX you already took away our 3x & 5x points
What about Business Cards that earn MR? Did the terms change for that as well?