So I just received my American Express bill for my Platinum small business card.   The whole point of this card is to earn big time cash back on certain purchases.    Specifically, I get 5% off of all gasoline purchases, office supplies, and wireless bills.    I don’t know about office supplies but I can guarantee $200 a month in gas and wireless for my family, netting me at least $10 a month in cash back, a real no brainer.

On the  last page of my statement, there is a list of all sorts of merchants that qualify for additional cash back.    One that jumps out at me is Delta Airlines, which offers 3% cash back, although they are discontinuing the offer later this month.   With that in mind, I used that card to charge $300 on Delta’s web site for their transfer miles program.

What jumped out at me when I got my card statement was that the $300 were not listed under purchases from Delta on the last page.   Closer inspection of the charge revealed this description:

DELTA BUY TRNF PTS POINTS.COM

Apparently, the charge goes through to the company Points.com  I thought it was very strange, since it appeared that I had entered my card at Delta’s web site Delta.com.      So I went back and looked a bit further.   First, I went to the Transfer Miles FAQ page on Delta’s website where I noticed that questions two and three are:

Q: What will my credit card statement show when billed?

A: Yes. Miles earned by using your Delta SkyMiles Credit Card from American Express will post to your account 6–12 weeks after the end of each month. If you’d like to apply for the SkyMiles credit card, visit American Express.

The answer to question two seems to be flat out wrong, based on my experience.   While the answer to the third question is not directly relevant, as I am not using the Delta SkyMiles American Express,  it does seem to indicate that American Express should be treating this purchase like any other Delta purchase.

Towards the end of the FAQ, I see this question:

Q: Who is points.com?

A: We have contracted with points.com to develop and operate the Transfer Miles Program. Points.com offers the world’s first online loyalty program currency exchange—pointsexchange™ and also develops online technology solutions for loyalty programs. For more information visit points.com.

Why Delta needs a third party to transfer points in their own SkyMiles loyalty program from one member to another was beyond my comprehension at first.   Then I remembered all of the times that I arrived in Atlanta on Delta, only to find that there were no available gates or there were no ramp agents to operate the jetway, as if they were surprised to see that an airplane had arrived.   It is all clear to me now.

Anyways, it gets more interesting when I went a bit further in the transaction, only to realize that while the web page clearly was titled and formatted to look like any other Delta web page, the URL, or web address, was https://transfer.points.com/deltaSkyMiles/inittransfer.do   When I scrolled down all the way on the bottom of the screen, I also notice a small logo with the caption “Powered by Points.com”

Furthermore, the terms and conditions had the name Points.com written all over it.  Of course, I was able to complete the transaction without noticing the non-Delta URL, the small logo below the the fine print, or reading the terms and conditions.

American Express’s Response

The nice lady I just spoke to had no idea why I did not get the cash back for a Delta purchase.   She speculated, I am sure incorrectly, that my cash back only counts for airline tickets.    These days, there are many, many purchases one can make from an airline other than tickets.   In addition to mileage purchases, and vacation packages, the list of fees is too lengthy to consider.

Fortunately, the Delta representative was happy to “open a ticket” with the promise that they would get back to me with a response.   I am not optimistic that they will get to the truth, and I am willing to push this a bit further, if not for the $9 then for the truth.

The Lesson Learned

Just because you go to a company’s web site and make a purchase, you cannot always be sure that the purchase will appear as if it is from that company.   I feel that Delta and American Express should either fix this system, or make it very clear that the transfer miles option is being handled by a third party.    Customers should clearly be warned that they are navigating away from Delta.com, and that purchases will not be treated as purchases from Delta.   Unfortunately, their own FAQ tells the opposite story.

I will let you know when and if I get a response from American Express.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 20:00 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.