Capital One has sent the following e-mail out to their cardholders, announcing two negative changes to redeeming rewards (emphasis is mine):
Recently, we’ve been working to provide you with even better ways to manage and redeem your rewards. As we update our program, we’ll be making changes to some redemption features you may have used in the past.
As of September 15, 2015, the following redemption options and features will change:
- If you gave someone else permission to redeem rewards on your behalf, they will no longer be able to do so as of September 15, 2015. You’ll need to redeem your own rewards after that time.
- The ability to transfer rewards from one Capital One® account to another will be unavailable; however, we know this feature is important to our customers and will be working to bring it back at a later date.
Remember, if you’d like to use the above features, please do so before September 15, 2015. We look forward to improving your rewards experience in the future!
I think it’s kind of hilarious (in a non funny way) to say they are working to provide even better ways to manage and redeem rewards and then announce two negative changes to the program, especially when they haven’t exactly added in positive changes recently.
I know for some people, especially those with a spouse who doesn’t like the idea of chasing rewards points and redeeming them this will be a major hassle, being able to redeem for them (or simply being able to transfer the points into your account) made things much easier.
Given that they don’t have a set date for when you’ll be able to combine points again, I wouldn’t hold my breathe that this will be returning in the short term. Personally I don’t see this as a massive issue, but negative changes are never a good thing.
