American Express partners with various retailers, including Amazon, to be able to pay with Membership Rewards points at checkout. We stay far away from this as the redemption rate is typically just .7% value, versus 1-2%+ value with other redemptions.
There are occasionally deals to use shop-with-points and get some sort of bonus or discount. We’ve seen this many times on Amazon where if you use even a single Membership Rewards point and get a nice discount.
The problem arises when you mistakenly use points, or mistakenly put the entire – not partial – purchase on points. What to do?
A friend tells me that it’s actually possible to call into Amex and have them to issue a reversal and put the points back, charging the card instead like an ordinary purchase. (Presumably any discounts you already got will stick since the retailer likely doesn’t even know about the reversal – this is just a courtesy move from Amex.)
When she called in recently to try getting a reversal on an erroneous Amazon shop-with-points purchase, the Amex rep said that he was literally in training that day for Amex employees where they learned that beginning 8/31/18 Amazon can be redeposited back upon request in case of error. The rep said that this had always been true for all other shop-with-points merchants, just not with Amazon; beginning 8/31 it’ll be true forAmazon as well.
Note, according to the rep, this only applies for purchases made AFTER 8/31, so my friend was out of luck, unfortunately.
Related:Â How to Use an Amazon Gift Card with a Shop-with-Points Order
