Update: Looks like this is affecting more than just SPG cards and it’s also affecting cardholders who didn’t contact American Express about missing bonuses.
There has been lots of reports from readers about the sign up bonus on their SPG cards not posting. This was covered by Travel Codex (originally here and the resolution here), we also suggested using Twitter when we linked to this TravelinPoints post in one of our recaps. What I want to talk about today is the fact that some readers have reported something unusual. The timeline seems to be like this:
- They have contacted Twitter, this seems to have caused a manual adjustment of the points owed
- After some time the bonus posts again. Presumably this is the bonus posting naturally
- American Express eventually realizes their mistake and then debits one of the sign up bonuses
The problem is that in some cases people have already spent the second bonus and they end up with a negative balance. I’m not sure how American Express plan to handle this long term, but my suggestion is that if you receive a second balance that you contact American Express to notify them of the issue (and in the mean time don’t spend the points). I know it’s tempting to just use the points, but I don’t see that being a good play long term (and ethically not the right thing to do either).
