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
I just chatted with AMEX, they told me to contact Amazon. I contacted amazon, they’ll have the billing department look into it.
This happened to me a few months ago. I called Amazon and they reversed it.
A few weeks ago I mistakenly used MR points to pay for an order at Walmart website. After online chat with the Amex rep, they reinstalled those points back to my account. Luckily I got the points back or I’ll be really upset for a while.
This has been happening a while I think… For whatever reason (probably human error tbh), my mom’s Amazon account switched to using points to pay for a transaction automatically… She didn’t notice it and made a purchase, but called either amex or amazon and had the problem fixed in a few minutes. Wasn’t hard. They switched it over to CC and everything was fine.
Edit: this was probably 2 months ago.
Couple of months ago I accidentally used 57k points on 400$ amazon gift cards. Since they are not returnable I lost the points any chance I can call and get them reverted ?
What about returning the purchases?
Hmm, not sure what happens with returns. I guess they’d refund the points.
Why wouldn’t they? They refund the original payment method.
Also, if they didn’t want to cancel or return the purchase they could call Amazon and ask to “change payment method on recent order.” Most companies allow that.
My mom did this with 50K MR at rite aid. Was able to call in to fix it. This was 6 months ago.
This happened to me during the last 20% off promo for using MR (on my second go around). I actually called Amazon and had the order canceled which voided the gift cards I had bought. The MR were back in my account the next day.
It wasn’t in error but I got a refund of my points by amazon when some of the orders I placed that were partially paid with Amex MR didn’t arrive. This is different from the article but it’s interesting that amazon is able to do this.
I had the same experience after mistakenly paying with points only instead of using just one single point. I contacted amazon through chat and was told that returning the item would restore the original payment method.
It’s farcical that you have to send the item back first before you can re-order it the way you intended to. But at least it does not cost you extra.
Good to know. When I first set mine up I almost wiped out all my Amex points. Luckily I caught it before finalizing the purchase. I would still be kicking myself.
You could always just return the purchase to amazon….
That’s true . I used 1 MR point on some amazon order and when I cancelled that order on amazon , I got the point back on Amex .