How I Recovered Missing Points After Amex Posted Them at the Wrong Rate

I admittedly don’t audit our household’s credit card rewards as often as I should. Lesson learned, I should probably check them more often.

While paying a credit card bill a month ago, I happened to notice that a transaction didn’t indicate any bonus points — though it should’ve earned some. Thinking that was odd, I started digging further and realized several transactions from an overseas trip had earned just 1 point per $1, rather than the 3x we should’ve earned on those purchases.

While the process wasn’t as quick as I would’ve liked — and doesn’t provide a way to get updates — claiming our missing Amex points was rather simple. Let me show you how it worked, in case you wind up in the same situation.

Amex Green Card Overview

The American Express^® Green Card has a powerful earning structure and a handful of benefits that justify its $150 annual fee (rates & fees).

My favorite part of the card is the way it helps us earn points quickly. That’s a chief reason why we downgraded my wife’s account to the Amex Green card from the Platinum Card^® from American Express last year.

The Amex Green card earns Membership Rewards points as follows:

• 3x on travel, including airfare, hotels, tours, campgrounds, car rentals, cruises, vacation rentals, and more
• 3x on transit, including trains, buses, ferries, subways, ride-sharing apps, and more
• 3x at restaurants worldwide, plus takeout and delivery in the U.S.
• 1x on other eligible purchases

The travel and transit categories are what we enjoy most about the Amex Green card, and they’re even more useful when considering the card doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees (rates & fees).

The information regarding the American Express^® Green Card was independently collected by Upgraded Points and not provided nor reviewed by the issuer.

Amex Points Didn’t Post Correctly

While paying my wife’s Amex Green card bill in early July, I happened to notice that some transactions weren’t listed with 3x earnings. We use this card almost exclusively in the bonus categories, so seeing a subway purchase without bonus earnings caught my eye immediately.

Then I noticed other purchases that hadn’t earned the 3 points per $1 spent we’d expected. To be fair, purchases don’t always earn the way we expect. This depends on the merchant code assigned to the company you’re spending with — think something that codes as a bar or food court on your credit card rather than a restaurant, meaning you don’t earn bonus points on some cards.

Thus, I decided to check the transaction details. Sure enough, Madrid’s metro system is listed as local transportation, and our purchases here should have qualified for 3x earnings on the Amex Green card (as well as other cards with a bonus category on travel spending).

From here, I checked our other purchases on trains and subways during a trip to Spain from late May to early June and made a list of which purchases didn’t earn 3x points as expected.

Claiming the Missing Points

One of my favorite features of the Amex website is the chat function — and how quickly agents tend to respond. I had my wife start a chat from her account and verify her identity. Then the agent was able to discuss the charges we had questions about.

After the agent checked the details of the transactions, they told us it could take up to 90 days to review the case and make a final decision about whether we’d receive more points. We were given a case number and told we could check back after 10 to 15 days.

We clarified with the chat agent that there was no other way to get updates other than starting a new chat. There wouldn’t be any alerts in the mobile app, emails, etc.

We found that frustrating, and our follow-up chat after 15 days didn’t produce any results. We were told that the case was still under investigation.

Then, in early August, several “Point adjustment” transactions appeared in my wife’s account. We didn’t receive any communication about these, but we noticed them as we checked weekly for activity in her points balance.

The original transactions still showed 1x earnings, but we wound up with the right number of points in the end after these deposits.

In total, it took 4 weeks to get the missing points after our first inquiry. We used the chat feature to ask for updates twice during that time, and we spent 2 to 3 minutes with the agent each time simply to find out there were no updates.

Final Thoughts

I noticed our Amex Green card account hadn’t earned points at the correct rate because we almost never use that card for anything outside the 3x bonus categories. Thus, seeing a transaction with 1x earnings stuck out very clearly.

Has this happened to us on our other Amex cards, earning 1x points instead of a higher earning rate? Maybe. I should definitely pay more attention to our accounts. That’s the lesson I learned from this process.

Inquiring about and claiming our points was rather simple, though it would be nice to receive communications or updates from American Express rather than just wondering what’s going on in the meantime.