Consumer complaint received 2022-01-23
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: WA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems
Sub-issue: Problem with rewards from credit card

Complaint:
I charged the amount of {$64.00}, twice, to my American Express Platinum charge card on XX/XX/XXXX for seat assignments. One was done with entering full credit card details, the other done using XXXX XXXX, which stores digital card/token issued by American Express on my XXXX and uses to process payments. 

American Express Platinum has a benefit that issues credits against incidental airline fees up to XXXX US dollars per calendar year. Seat assignment should be eligible under this program. The program terms are attached. 

American Express did not process the credit within 4 weeks as so I inquired them on XX/XX/XXXX via chat feature on their mobile app. I was told the credit should post within 5 business days. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, I saw the credits posted with the date XX/XX/XXXX, but only for one of the two seat assignment fees. I inquired with the mobile app chat feature, eventually escalating to the supervisor, but was not successful at getting the credit applied. They were giving out the following reasons for not being able to do so, which I will counter below.

1. This transaction was processed through a " third party mobile wallet '' and not directly by the airline. 

Nowhere in the terms of the program states the charges must be directly from an airline. All it states is " Fees not charged by the Card Member 's selected airline do not qualify for statement credits, '' which is interpreted as the selected airline must be the merchant for the transaction XXXX XXXX  XXXX in this case ). This interpretation is supported by the examples in the same sentence : airline wifi purchases sold by a different vendor, or fees charged by XXXX XXXX XXXX. Interpreting this as " no one involved other than American Express and the airline '' is absurd since all credit card charges must go through a payment processor. 

Also note that American Express explicitly advertises that XXXX XXXX transactions are eligible for regular credit card rewards and offers, as shown by FAQ in one of the attached PDFs.

2. It's because the way the transaction is coded.

The second argument they used is that they can not reimburse me because the transaction is not coded " correctly. '' When I requested level 3 transaction data to back their claim up, they were unable to share any information to me.

The two transactions, one that got reimbursed and the one that didn't, look virtually identical to the customer. The only differences are ( a ) transaction names are prefixed with XXXX, and ( b ) there is a " Method : Paid for with XXXX XXXX '' annotation when XXXX XXXX was used. The merchant is identified the same and the same type of XXXX XXXX. XXXX XXXX  ( redacted ), is included. See the corresponding attached pdf for how transaction details looks like from the consumer web UI. 

Although they do have a line in their terms saying " the airline must submit the charge under the appropriate merchant code, industry code, or required service or product identifier for the charge to be recognized as an incidental air travel fee, '' the terms later in the same paragraph state : " we rely on airlines to submit the correct information on airline transactions, so please call the number on the back of the Card if statement credits have not posted after 4 weeks from the date of purchase. '' This line is effectively asking the customers to reach out to American Express when the coding and/or identifiers on the transaction are incorrect and therefore the reimbursement had failed to process automatically, so a manual human review can correct the problem when the transaction is indeed for an incidental charge from the airline. Thus, to deny reimbursement based on the basis of coding is absurd. 

Even if we interpret the prior line to imply " the transaction must be correctly coded to be reimbursed no matter what, '' it is nonetheless a deceptive practice to arbitrarily make decisions not to pay based on " coding '' or " identifiers '' that the customers are unable to check or verify, more so when the customer can see that the bank has correctly identified passenger manifest and the merchant ( which also determines the reward point multiplier ) from the information presented to the customer. 

As an American Express credit/charge card customer of several years, I am very disappointed to see American Express refusing reimbursement for the benefit I rightfully deserve, despite escalating to multiple levels of support to no avail. As a final note, I would like to warn everyone to think twice before they apply to an American Express credit/charge card product. You might think you're in the right after you attempt to read their fine print, but it doesn't matter if their support agents disagree and decide not to right the wrong for your benefit that was previously advertised.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief