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If you want to change it for next year, you should call sooner than later
The last several years I have selected American Airlines as my Amex Platinum airline fee credit airline of choice. Each year I would purchase 2 $100 gift cards for the airline and they would be reimbursed on my statement. As far as I know, American still codes gift cards in a way that would trigger the credit, but American and Alaska have changed their partnership ( only certain bookings done thru the AS website, with AS flight numbers will earn you credit). Since I’m aligning loyalty with Alaska next year, I’ve changed my airline of choice to Alaska and will test the gift card purchase technique and report back, but according to the flyertalk threads this tactic still works.
I ended up calling in to make this work as I couldn’t find an option online. The Rep informed me that he thought any change to the airline of choice needed to be phoned in so that the disclosure could be read. There is an online option, but for whatever reason it doesn’t work for me, but you can go here and give it a go.
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I just read the details for the benefit on Amex’s website and it states that gift cards are ineligible. I have $200 to use on American airlines for the benefit and would love to use this with gift cards. Do you know how I can confirm that this will work?
Hey Cecilia – you can see my post here from last January where I go into some more detail. http://monkeymiles.boardingarea.com/amex-platinum-200-airline-fee-credited/
The terms do exclude gift cards but it depends on how the airline accounts the GCs. My understanding is that aa still codes them in a way that Amex reimburses. They could change this at any point. Additionally, if you don’t get reimbursed Amex won’t adjust if you call in as it’s not on their list of approved fees. Also, it’s when the charge hits the account not when you made the charge. I.e. moves from pending to a line of your bill. So you’d better hurry to make it by the 31st. Lemme know how it goes
The details on the Amex website state that gift cards are ineligible. Are you sure this works for AA and/or how do you confirm that? I have AA and have not used my $200 credit yet this year and would be happy to use it on gift cards if I know it works!!
You can change your airline selection once a year online in JANUARY, per their benefits page.