Amex Airline Credits (May) Trigger Even if You Select Airline After Purchase

It’s January 1, which means a new calendar year of airline/travel credits from Amex Platinum, Citi Prestige, etc. I just want to share an interesting experience from December when I was using up my new Hilton Aspire card’s $250 airline credit for 2018 (this is my referral link for the 150k, highest ever, offer).

I made an eligible purchase from Southwest that was under the annual credit. A few minutes later, I realized I hadn’t select an airline! Doh. I went to the airline selection page, and sure enough, nothing was selected. I proceeded to select Southwest. This was probably 5-10 minutes after the purchase. I was sure that purchase wouldn’t trigger the credit, so I went ahead with a new purchase. To my surprise, a few days later both purchases got reimbursed as “AMEX AIRLINE FEE REIMBURSEMENT”. The other interesting thing is that the Benefits page for the Aspire card has a tracker for your usage of the $250 airline credit. For me, the tracker was updated 2-3 days after the purchase authorization, and 1-2 days before the reimbursement.

So, I got reimbursed even though I selected my airline choice after making a purchase, albeit within minutes. I’m not sure if this would work for a longer lapse, though it’s possible that as long as airline is selected before the tracker updates, it’s eligible. If you have more data points on this, please share.

BTW, if you don’t have the Aspire card by now, you should really consider it. I’m not just saying this because I have a referral link for it, but it’s definitely my favorite new card of 2018. It’s one of probably only two cards I would consider paying the high annual fee to keep long term (the other being CNB Crystal), provided no change to the current benefits like $250 resort credit, free weekend night and automatic Diamond status. Even OMAAT got it recently, and he was under 5/24. Anyway, here’s my referral link for the 150k offer.

Happy New Year, and Happy Aspirational Travel 🙂