I didn’t see this one coming, but apparently Discover is sending out emails that they’ll credit many of the purchases made under the 10% Apple Pay promo which were initially denied.
Discover flagged many people’s purchases made under the 10% Apple Pay promo, back at the end of 2015, as gift card purchases. Many were and some were not.
Discover gave the option to dispute the results, and many people did so.Either because their purchases were completely or partially ordinary purchases or because they wanted to test Discover’s ability to verify on their own. Discover then pulled the receipts using their superpowers (NSA, whatever 🙂 ) and denied the claims since they were gift cards. They did give a $1 credit for the activation fee or for the small item that came along with the gift card.
Today, for reasons that aren’t clear, Discover is emailing many people and telling them they will pay out the 10% bonus on those purchases that were initially denied. Maybe some sort of legal thing? Who knows.
From the reports on Flyertalk and reader D., it appears:
- Most of those who submitted claims to Discover are getting the cashback emails today, after initially getting denied
- But not all
- Undisputed transactions are not getting these emails
- It seems that the emails are for people who bought a small item along with the gift cards; unclear if gift card-only purchases got the same
Yay!
Thanks to reader D. for the email screenshot
FYI, somehow someway, Discover sent denial emails for all but one of my transactions on one card but they paid 90% of them anyway back in January.
Perhaps someone pressed a legal case based on them denying a claim and not paying out and they looked at the overall impact of just paying them all which was likely was small considering most folks(like myself) didn’t bother to submit a claim when word got around they were denying claims.
I disputed many transactions back then but I haven’t received any email.
Why no love for me Discover? 🙁
I think eventually they may have to pay out the rest of it even to those without claims. They need to just bite the bullet. Everyone was given a hard limit anyhow and Discover knew it wouldn’t cost them more than that promo amount per customer. They plainly stated they decided to use the money they would’ve spent on ads and instead give it as an incentive to get people to apply for the card. Sometimes it’s financially better for a large company to do what they originally said they would do at the beginning of a campaign than to suffer long through class actions which ultimately could mean not only paying out what was originally promised, but also hefty attorney fees as well as any court mandated awards/penalties on top of the rest. Settlement could also mean more expenditures than just paying out the incentive awards. I doubt this is over and even those who did not dispute will probably be included in any class action unless they opt out. I’d rather see Discover not go through all of that anyhow. That’s not good for the brand. BTW, I never complained to the company. Disclosure: this is just speculation and not accusations or allegations.
they had no way of knowing what was purchased they used a formula to deny them. I had received a warning that one of my purchases was a gift card but they would pay that one but no others going forward. However, the purchase they questioned was not a gift card purchase at all. After i sent a message back to them asking them why they are sending me a message like that for something that has nothing to do with a gift card (attaching the receipt showing what was purchased). All i got was a reply back stating thank you for sending the info,. I did buy gift cards later and they never questioned anything after that and in fact were paying the 10% very quickly compared to the first month.
How did people dispute the transactions if they really WERE gift card purchases? They asked for receipts, and the receipts will say that it was a gift card. Also, is it for sure too late to dispute them?
It might be, I heard 3/31 was then deadline for requesting receipts
Damn….I disputed one just to see how they were going to react. Sure wish I disputed them all…. didn’t see this one coming
I received declined rewards mail for two of my purchases. Both made at best buy and both are completely giftcards.
I disputed 1 and left the other.
Today I received the email regarding the disputed claim and reward payment for the same
I disputed with multiple others because the receipt from the store did have details, only the total. They are paying out on those.
Don’t all receipts say the product that was purchased?
Nope, we got the signature page only
Maybe coincidence but I got a Discover Deals email yesterday for a ~$4200 ($209.90) Best Buy purchase I made on Black Friday. I didn’t pay for any of the purchase with my Discover card so I just assumed it got denied on that basis since I never heard anything either way. Maybe they’re going through old high dollar amount cash back claims.