A cautionary tale...
This is a great offer. It’s tantamount to 3X miles on $2500 spend per month for 6 months. My wife and I both got this offer in Dec 2015 and completed it successfully. In November 2016 my wife got the offer again in the mail. I was not targeted this time. The flyer specifies one must activate the offer by calling or visiting a website. There’s also a specific promotion code in the flyer. I activated it via the website and DW proceeded to put $2500 per month on the card November through April 2017.
When the 30k bonus had not posted by the end of June, I contacted Barclays by SM. The response was promising “We can confirm that you accepted the offer for spending $2,500.00 from November 1, 2016 through April 30, 2017 to earn a bonus of 30,000 miles, and that you have met the spending requirement. Please note that the miles should have been awarded to your July 3, 2017 statement. As a result we have submitted Case xxxxxxxx to have the miles awarded to your account. “
A few days later a cryptic letter in the mail says only "We are currently unable to complete your request." There was no case number or explanation and no further SM communication.
So I SM’d about the cryptic letter and got “We regret to inform you that upon investigating the account in regards to the promotional offer, we show that your account was not properly enrolled. As such, we are unable to award the 30,000 bonus miles. If you have the communication that would have been sent indicating that you were enrolled in the promotion, we ask that you send the communication to our Customer Care Correspondence.”
I asked what form that communication would have taken and they had to admit that if enrolling via the web you just see a confirmation onscreen and no correspondence is sent. So, they expected me to have taken a screenshot of the fleeting confirmation.
The back and forth SMs continued: “Upon review, we can confirm that the offer in question was not properly opted into and we sincerely apologize for any misinformation received. …we have no record of enrollment we are unable to award the 30,000 bonus miles in question.”
I said I categorically did enroll and that the spending patterns for the next 6 months were strong circumstantial evidence. I concluded with “I am hoping someone in a supervisory position will see the merits of my case, and with an eye towards customer goodwill and courtesy, will be able to award the points in question.”
About a week later a letter arrived in the mail with the good news that the points were to be awarded. They showed up in my wife’s account a week later.
Thank you Barclays, even if you made me work hard for it!
Lesson learned. Confirm everything, screenshot everything, don’t take no for an answer.
