The Amex RAT team has been on an absolute rampage this year.
- They updated their terms to penalize those gaming the signup bonus system
- They may have begun cracking down on some kinds of minimum spend purchases for counting toward signup bonus spend, such as Simon Mall
- They added terms on the SPG and Hilton cards indicating rewards may begin coming with a 12-week delay starting November 1, 2017
Now they’ve added terms to Membership Rewards-earning cards (thanks to Travelwithgrant):
- Beginning November 1, 2017, if American Express believes you are engaging in abuse, misuse or gaming in connection to earning or redeeming Membership Rewards points, they can temporarily suspend your ability to earn or redeem Membership Rewards points
They can now:
- Take away any points in your program account
- Temporarily suspend your ability to redeem points
- Temporarily suspend your ability to earn points
- Cancel your program account
- Cancel any of your American Express Cards
As Grant notes, they’ve already been freezing people’s accounts. They have their Financial Review process which freezes everything during the review, we’ve also seen other freezes without Financial Review as well. It’s fair to say that once it’s in the terms they’ll be quicker to apply such a freeze.
It’s interesting that on co-branded cards (SPG, Hilton) they added the 12-week clause and on MR cards they’re adding stronger terms. On their own cards they can write what they want. It’ll also be interesting to see if these terms get added to Blue Cash cards as well.
