I was reading in the Forum Level 2 this morning that the terms changed on Amex Gift Cards. We have a rule where we don’t talk about what goes on there, kinda like fight club, but I see no upside in holding back this news, other than if I were malicious and wanted people to be burned.
The terms changed to state that denoms of $200 are the maximum for cashback at TopCashBack. I’m pretty sure that many of you who buy these cards may have missed that, and placed an order like clockwork this morning. If you did, and you bought the $2000 cards you will be ineligible for cashback. What to do?
Option 1 Cancel the order
It seems that you need to wait for them to arrive in order to cancel:
@FrequentMiler @Saverocity rep says I have to wait until physical card(s) arrive to cancel. Order still processing. Bummer…
— Robert Dwyer (@RobertDwyer) August 20, 2015
Option 2 Eat the loss, liquidate, move on.
It sounds daft to some no doubt, but if I had screwed up like this I wouldn’t cancel, I’d move on full speed ahead. I’ve never cancelled, but you can imagine a hoard of people will do this fretting over a few bucks. This might increase refund times, and overload the dept, maybe even have them lose your application to cancel. I’d let those guys wait in line while I moved to the next thing.
Do you really want to be waiting on multiples of $2000 to be returned to your card, in order to be refunded multiples of less than $10? You know what I think about $10…
Ed says
Are you referring to only orders this morning through TopCashBack? What about orders that have already gone through this morning through BeFrugal or other portals which still show the normal terms? We save and print all terms and promised cb% each time we order just in case terms change that day so we can prove we ordered before the change. Hoping that will suffice today for non-TCB orders, but leary of placing any further orders even with portals who’s terms haven’t changed yet.
Have you seen this terms change at Amex’s level or only aware of it from TCB? Has Amex notified all their partnered portals and those portals simply haven’t update yet?
Matt says
Sorry for not being clear, I was referring here to TCB. That said, I think it is optimistic to assume that Befrugal and whatnot have a relationship in place where they can offer cashback on $2000 where TCB cannot.
ed says
At this point it appears no terms changes yet for BF or some of the others, but last year we saw a similar temporary death as one portal would update and then others would update later that day or week. Hopefully, this is specific to TCB as I heard from a TCB rep earlier this week that they wouldn’t be offering the normal for a couple weeks. We had gotten used to every other week with them bumping up to 2.25, but when I noticed a change this past Tuesday I suspected a change was coming. I never placed an order with TCB this week, but gave my business to other portals.
I’ve always thought that TCB brought in more orders for Amex than the others, but does anyone else have any data points on that?
Matt says
There’s a thread in the forum