point fu

Well, I just had my $550 Amex Platinum annual fee hit my account. I'd read online that people were getting retention bonus offers so I thought I'd give them a call and see what they said. Long story short: they're giving people 50,000 point retention bonuses since Covid has really negated most of the card's perks, but because they gave me a retention bonus last August , I'm not eligible. Furthermore, they told me if I canceled or downgraded the card, I'd forfeit those 50,000 points since they were considered a "bonus for keeping the card for a whole year". Well, you win some, you lose some.

In early January we bought tickets for an April trip to Australia through American Express Travel. With all of the Covid-19 lockdowns around the globe, it slowly became clear our trip wasn't going to happen. Given that half the planet was trying to call in and cancel or move their trips, I decided to wait until about a week before my trip was scheduled to begin. Amex's phone lines were an absolute mess. I waited over an hour only to be disconnected. Twice. I tried using their web chat client and the people staffing it weren't allowed to do any kind of booking-related changes. I was starting to get nervous because Qatar was still operating a few of its flights but I knew Australia had closed its borders . I was afraid that if Qatar didn't actually cancel the flight, I'd be on the hook for it and not get my money back. At some point I noticed that my email confirmation had an entirely different phone number to call than the website. I'd been calling 1-800-297-