Tag Archives: American Express

a logo of a company

Anatomy & Timeline of 2 Cancelled Air Canada Aeroplan Award Tickets

Good morning everyone, happy Friday!  Long story short, I planned an awesome award trip to Africa (Victoria Falls, South Africa, and Madagascar) for August 2020, but due to the Coronavirus Pandemic, we decided to cancel the trip and try again next year.  I planned / booked this award trip in October 2019 and part of the award booking process involved transferring 77,000 American Express Membership Rewards Points to my Air Canada Aeroplan account.  I recently wrote about my Anatomy and Timeline of a Cancelled American Airlines Award Ticket, so I decided I would write something similar for my experience cancelling 2 Air Canada Aeroplan award tickets.

a screenshot of a website

Continue reading

a close-up of a credit card

American Express Automatically Issued Missing Membership Rewards Points from AMEX Business Platinum 35% Rebate

Good afternoon everyone, I hope your week is going well.  Yesterday morning, I received an email from AMEX with the subject line “Important Notice About Your American Express Account.”  That subject line could mean many things (my mind automatically assumes the worst when receiving these type of emails), but I was very happy to see that American Express gave me Membership Rewards Points due to an issue with the Pay with Points feature available on my American Express Business Platinum Card.  I have only used the Pay with Points feature once in May 2019 and wrote about My Disappointing Experience with AMEX Business Platinum 35% Membership Rewards Point Rebate in August 2019, so I don’t have any immediate plans to use the feature again.  There were 2 strange things about this email.

a screenshot of a email

Continue reading

green text on a white background

American Express Waiving Membership Rewards Points Transfer Excise Tax Through 12/31 & Refunding Previous 2020 Charges

Good morning everyone, I hope your week is going well.  I was checking my American Express online account and I saw a credit balance of $1.80 on my American Express Everyday Credit Card.  I never use this card, so I was surprised to see that the credit was a Membership Rewards Airline Tax Offset Fee Credit.  I did some digging and learned that this refund is related to a $1.80 charge from February that I paid to transfer 3,000 American Express Membership Rewards Points to my Delta account to book an award ticket.  I also learned that American Express is waiving the excise tax fee for domestic airlines through December 31, 2020 (including Delta, JetBlue, and Hawaiian).

a screenshot of a credit card

Continue reading

a blue and red credit card

American Express Hilton Aspire Resort Credit Applied Toward Restaurant Purchase in 3 Days

Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday.  From June 1 through August 31, American Express Hilton Aspire Credit Card members can now use their $250 resort credit toward restaurant purchases.  To test this out, I made a small restaurant purchase at Panera Bread (through their app) on June 1.  On June 4, the statement credit posted as HILTON RESORT CREDIT.  A 3 day turnaround time for statement credits is pretty standard for American Express.  The one downside with the $250 Hilton Resort Credit is that there is no tracker that shows how much you have spent or redeemed toward the $250 cap.

a screenshot of a credit card

Continue reading

a close-up of a logo

Anatomy & Timeline of a Cancelled American Airlines Award Ticket (LGA-DFW-SNA)

Good morning everyone.  A long time ago (February 2020), I purchased 2 American Airlines award tickets to fly from LaGuardia, New York (LGA) to Dallas, Texas (DFW) to Orange County, California (SNA).  Laura and I were going to be in NYC in early July and then fly to Orange County for Fourth of July weekend.  I picked this route because I wanted to check out the American Express Centurion Lounges at LGA and DFW.  I used 20,000 American Airlines miles per ticket (40k total), paid the taxes with my Chase Sapphire Reserve Credit Card, and paid for upgraded seat assignments with my American Express Gold Card and JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Visa Infinite.  Then the Coronavirus Pandemic hit and we cancelled our entire NYC trip.

This was my first time cancelling an American Airlines award ticket, so I didn’t know what to expect in terms of refunds and redeposited miles.  In this post, I will walk you through the timeline of events.  I cancelled our American Airlines award tickets on May 7 and received the following Trip Cancellation email immediately.  In the email, it said, “If you booked with AAdvantage miles, and your trip is eligible, we’ll automatically reinstate your miles within 48 hours.”  Unfortunately, 48 hours came and went, but nothing happened…

a screenshot of a travel ticket

Continue reading