Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday. Yesterday, I had a mini panic attack when I got an AwardWallet notification that my Amtrak Guest Rewards account balance dropped to 0. I immediately logged into my Amtrak Guest Rewards account and saw that my 22,510 Amtrak Guest Rewards Points had expired. Oh no!! According to Frequent Miler’s Reasonable Redemption Values (RRVs) for Amtrak Guest Rewards Points, these points are worth between 2.5-2.9 cents each, so those 22,510 Amtrak Guest Rewards Points were worth up to $653 in Amtrak travel. I hadn’t taken an Amtrak trip since my California Zephyr trip from Denver to San Francisco in February 2016 – but I definitely had my eye on the Empire Builder route from Chicago to Seattle/Portland.
Strangely, the Amtrak Guest Rewards Points were deducted from my account on August 15, but I didn’t get the AwardWallet account update until September 12. Come on AwardWallet, tell me sooner that my points are expiring next time!
I tried to find the Amtrak Guest Rewards expiration policy, but Amtrak redid their website, so now it is very difficult to find information. I ended up asking Julie, Amtrak’s Virtual Assistant, and she said that points expire 24 months after your last earning or redemption activity. Based on the recent activity in my Amtrak account, it looks like my Amtrak Guest Rewards Points should have expired around November 30, 2018, not on August 15, 2019. My only guess is that August 2019 is 3 years after the sign up bonus posted from the Bank of America Amtrak Guest Rewards Credit Card.
I wanted to reach out to Amtrak Guest Rewards to see if they could reinstate my expired Amtrak Guest Rewards Points. I called their customer service number (1-800-872-7245) and spoke to a rep on the Amtrak Guest Rewards Team. I asked the rep if it were possible to reinstate the expired Amtrak Guest Rewards Points. The rep said that he could do it once, as a courtesy credit. The rep said that I needed to have activity within the next 24 months or have the Bank of America Amtrak Guest Rewards Credit Card (points don’t expire if you have the credit card).
A few hours after my call to Amtrak, I received this email stating that I had Amtrak Guest Rewards Points waiting to be redeemed.
I logged into my Amtrak Guest Rewards account and saw that the 22,510 expired points were reinstated. Woo hoo!
If you have any questions about Amtrak Guest Rewards, please leave a comment below. Have a great weekend everyone!
My Americans Advantage points expired on Sept 1. I called on Sept 8 to book a flight, saw my points expired 8 days earlier and asked them for help. They told me to drop dead. No, I did not buy the flight on AA Jerks.
That was not very nice of AA. Check out this link to see if you can restore or buy back your expired miles: https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-program/miles/reactivate-miles.jsp
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Are the reinstated points valid til Sept 2021?
Amtrak currently shows that the points will expire in November 2021. I had some activity in the last 2 weeks.
not sure if they still do this. anyone had recent experience like this? do they still do this due to covid? I have about 10k points expiring in July. kinda risky to try this out. I tried to use their shopping portal and they kept saying the things i purchased did not qualify. geez.
My advice would be to call Amtrak and see what options they give you for extending your points. My account currently says “Points valid through 10/19/2021”, so I need to figure out something to keep the points active before then.