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American Express Credit Card Airline Fee Credits Not Triggering for Delta, Southwest Gift Card Purchases

  • Jason Stauffer

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    INSIDER SECRET: The travel credits you get with certain premium credit cards like Chase Sapphire Reserve®, US Bank Altitude™ Reserve Visa Infinite® Card and the Citi Prestige card have travel credits that are easier to use because they apply to much more than just airline incidental fees with a single airline.

    One of the perks that comes with certain higher-annual-fee American Express credit cards is a yearly airline incidental fee credit. This benefit is available with the:

    American Express Credit Card Airline Fee Credit Issues

    Each year you can select an airline (from a list of nine) and incidental charges with that airline will trigger the credit. These charges include change or cancellation fees, inflight food & beverage, lounge day passes, checked baggage fees, seat assignment fees and more. But you won’t be reimbursed for airfare or the taxes and fees you pay on an award flight.

    One way to get around this was to purchase gift cards and even though the terms say that gift cards won’t qualify for the credit, they would (in smaller denominations) with certain airlines. However, earlier this year American Airlines gift cards stopped triggering the credit and now things don’t look good for the last two hold outs: Delta and Southwest.

    In the past, when you bought Delta gift cards through the desktop site in increments of $50 you would earn the credit, but it looks like that changed in late June. I was reimbursed for two Delta gift cards purchased on June 20 and 21, but the same gift card purchase made on June 23rd still hasn’t been reimbursed even though I haven’t used all of my Amex Platinum card’s yearly airline fee credit.

    And I made the same gift card purchases with my Hilton Aspire card on the same days, but was only reimbursed for one purchase. And again, I still have airline credits left to use for this year.

    The Points Guy is also reporting the same thing is happening with Southwest gift card purchases. And itdays of being able to purchase gift cards and getting reimbursed with your Amex airline credit are behind us, although we don’t know for sure.

    If you’ve purchased a gift card with Delta or Southwest with an Amex card in the past month let me know in the comments whether or not you’ve gotten the credit and what the purchase and reimbursement dates were.

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    Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)