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I’m testing out the incidental airline fee credit
As I’m sure you know, the American Express Platinum cards offers a $200 incidental airline credit as an annual benefit. For the past several years I’d selected American Airlines as my go to airline and purchased 2 – $100 gift cards. Within a few days they would be credited. I’d read where this worked on multiple airlines, one being Alaska, and for 2018 I went ahead and changed my airline of choice align with my favorite loyalty program: Alaska Airlines. The problem? As of mid-2017, AS gift cards no longer code as incidental fees, and aren’t refunded if you purchased them with your Amex Plat. The fix? It’s reported that some cheap fares are being fully reimbursed…BINGO! So to test it out, I purchased a $40 one way fare to Vegas.
I set up a “pending monitor” so I can see if the charge gets reversed once it’s processed.
Log into your Amex account, go to pending charges, and there is an option in the upper right to request notification when the post moves from pending to posted. This is great, as I’ll just wait for the notification rather than having to go through the palava of logging in and pulling up my current statement.
If it gets reversed, I’ll buy 4 more of these bad boys, cancel them, and deposit them into my wallet to use on future flights. I’ll keep you guys up to date.
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Agggreeed. Why do you have to game it? This is why every year we get less and less valuable benefits. Just use it as it’s intended
Benji – Respectfully disagree. If I’m entitled to a $200 airline fee credit that Amex dictates as incidental, and the charges register as incidental, how exactly am I gaming the system? I’m not lying to Amex about my purchases, they know how certain items register on their system, and if they want to change their system, they fully have the capability to do so. Amex has the most restrictive fee credit policy as is, and if they restricted it even more, they’d lose a lot of customers, IMO…
This is why we can’t have nice things.