When it rains, it pours.
After recent hits to manufactured spending due to both GiftCardMall and GiftCards.com reducing the amount of cashback that can be earned through shopping portals from $60,000 of spend per month to $2,000 and GiftCardMall reducing the maximum Visa gift card amount to $250, American Express has unsurprisingly decided to join the party by clawing back bonus points earned on grocery store spend from their recent card “enhancements”.
They’re performing not-so-subtle sleight of hand by initially awarding all the points you’d expect to see on your account.
Those points haven’t lasted long though because Amex has promptly clawed back the bulk of the points.
Some Delta cardholders have been experiencing the same issue, as have some Marriott cardholders. The clawbacks have been initiated by Amex and so it’s not like people are getting Bonvoyed in the traditional sense, but Marriott isn’t helping matters by referring to reversals of large numbers of points as a “goodwill bonus”.
There are four weeks left to take advantage of grocery store bonused spend on Amex cards, but these clawbacks certainly make their cards less appealing if you’ll be doing any kind of gift card buying activity.
Question
Have you had any points clawed back on any of your accounts? If so, was it for spend on Hilton, Marriott or Delta cards and what kind of sums have been clawed back?
Thanks to the person that allowed me to share the screenshots of their clawbacks for this post.