Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well. A few days ago, I received the following email from Discover titled “Important information from Discover” (could they think of a more generic title for an email?). In the email, Discover said that they underpaid me for my participation in the Discover It Apple Pay promo from 2015. In the email, Discover promised to award the missing cash back within the next 2 billing cycles. Luckily for me, my cash back just posted… all $326 worth :)
When I signed into my Discover It online account, the cash back bonus amount popped out.
Looking at the breakdown of the rewards activity, the $326.74 cash back came from the Apple Pay promo.
I wanted to figure out how Discover calculated the $326.74 cash back, so I clicked on the Search Transactions tab, typed “APPLE PAY” into the description, used the dates mentioned in the Discover email (9/16/2015 through 12/31/15), and selected all spending categories.
Here are all the qualifying Apple Pay purchases made between 9/16/15 and 12/31/15. When I added up all the purchases, I got $3,010.31. 10% of that would be $301.03, but Discover paid me $326.74. I can’t figure out why the numbers are different. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. Could it possibly be interest on the 1.5 years of missing cash back?
If you received the Discover email from above and made Apple Pay purchases during the promotional period, your missing cash back should post soon, hopefully by your next statement. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
Did they ever pay out anything on the apple pay promo? My guess is the 326 is actually 168 doubled. If that is the case, I would guess you got 133 of paymenets during the promo (which got doubled at the end of your double cash back promo year). Check your oct, nov, dec statements from 2015 to see how much Apple Pay promo you got.
That’s possible. I didn’t have a lot of time to dig into my Oct, Nov, and Dec 2015 statements to see what they gave me.
They already paid me out the amounts based upon the applicable transactions. Those amounts consisted of the normal 10% bonus plus the cash back doubling. The first payouts occurred about a statement to two statements after the purchases. The doubling bonus payout occurred after the year of the doubling deal.
But, some gift card purchases got denied at the time, and they only paid out the 2% (1% everyday cash back and doubling) on those.
I submitted a protest for one of the transactions to see what they would do. In that transaction, I bought gift cards, but bought other items as well. Discover denied the entire thing, non-gift card transactions and all. I started looking for any items that I could buy that weren’t gift cards and everything was dandy after that.
Well, I’m getting the same e-mail you got, now. I’m wondering if they are going to pay out on the transaction I protested and, if so, will it be the entire transaction, or just the non-gift card items. Or, will they pay out on all purchases that were denied? It will be interesting.
It looks like you got 10% on everything, so I’m wondering if they paid you out following the purchases or not.
Also, FYI, I believe the Apple Pay bonus was 10% on top of the everyday 1%. So, you getting $326 bonus on the $3010 makes sense…although the math isn’t perfect.
The math is confusing at best. I wish they would include a short calculation of how they got the final number. Oh well, I’m not complaining.
Thanks for including screen shots on how to do Search Transactions. I find the Discover website to be hopelessly confusing, but secretly powerful. However, like you, I was still unable to find out what I wanted to know. I got the same email you did. Annoyed that the email didn’t mention the amount being granted, never mind how they calculated it. Went online and found it was $102.51. No idea how they arrived at that. That number doesn’t match anything in the purchases list. And it’s been 18 months!!! I certainly wasn’t expecting anything at this point, so woohoo! (But I still think they are hella incompetent).
Take the free money and don’t ask too many questions :)