Consumer complaint received 2025-01-09 00:00:00
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems — Problem with rewards from credit card
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
Based upon an offer provided by my Amex XXXX card to earn a {$200.00} statement credit for booking a stay at an eligible XXXX XXXX, I booked the XXXX XXXX XXXX for XX/XX/year> to XX/XX/year> for {$250.00}. Amex confirmation # XXXX. Hotel confirmation # XXXX After the booking, I inquired with amex why I had not received the {$200.00} statement credit and the promised XXXX Membership Rewards points on the booking. They responded that the hotel stay I booked was ineligible becaus it was not a pre-paid rate. According to the terms of the XXXX statement credit " A prepaid booking is referred to as Pay Now on Amextravel.com and in the Amex App ''. 

During the booking process on amextravel.com, after selecting a room at the hotel, a pop-up is given to allow the selection of " Pay Now '', " Pay with Points '', or " Pay Later ''. I selected Pay Now and proceeded to checkout knowing that I had followed the terms of the credit. What I did not know at the time was that the amextravel website automatically reverted the stay to a " deposit '' based prepaid stay ( even after clicking " Pay Now '' and not " Pay Later '' ) that made it ineligible for the credit. There was no verbiage on the page that said this made the stay ineligible for XXXX or made it a pre-paid rate. Indeed, I relied upon the fact that the selection of " Pay Now '' at the pop-up was following the terms of the credit as any rational person would have done. 

I escalated this issue with amex travel and they refused to honor the credit and said I would need proof of the exact instance happening during booking. Of course, it would be absurd knowing I should've taken a screenshot of an apparent website glitch that I didn't know had happened until days after the booking. 

I contend that the amextravel.com website was performing an extremely misleading bait & switch tactic of making the user think they would select a " Pay Now '' stay and then automatically reverting it to a deposit-based stay and making it ineligible for credit.

I found multiple instances of this happening when I tried test bookings after the fact and took screenshots of the page where it advertised " Pay Now '' only to silently switch to a deposit based stay. These screenshots are attached to this complaint. Note that since the time I took these screenshots reproducing the behavior, it appears amextravel.com has resolved the glitch and I can no longer can find an instance of it happening. At the time it was happening at multiple XXXX XXXX hotels such as XXXX, XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX, etc. However, I also contend Amex is aware of this behavior as XXXX of the chat representatives I spoke with indicated that it was possible for a user to select Pay Now and for it to still revert to a pre-paid rate. My only guess is that Amex is silently switching users to a pre-paid rate when they have no post-paid stays available - certainly this is something they need to remedy to avoid misleading more users. 

I provided this info to the amex global complaint team who provided XXXX attempt at resolution and stated that even if they were aware of such an issue ocurring on their website that it wouldn't be sufficient to provide compensation for the glitch. This is extremely frustrating to have amex promise a credit to entice a consumer to make a booking, and then use an extremely misleading tactic to make said booking ineligible for the credit, and provide XXXX recourse to resolve the issue. 


I have provided screenshots of the bookings showing the behavior I encountered. In addition I have provded a printout of the forum at the following link XXXX XXXX XXXX This forum shows multiple other amextravel users who have encountered the same glitch and the same misleading tactics that resulted in Amex avoiding having to pay out the XXXX credit.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation