American Express just slammed shut a popular loophole that let Delta cardholders easily turn hotel booking credits into cash—and has started reversing statement credits for cardmembers who try it.
Delta American Express cards offer statement credit for booking prepaid hotels and vacation rentals through Delta’s portal. The credits vary from $100 to $250, depending on the card (with larger credits for higher annual fee cards).
If you make an eligible booking, it should trigger the credit. Thing is, until recently if you cancelled the stay you’d get a refund but the statement credit wasn’t reversing. So people were using this to turn the Delta stays benefit into cash. However, about two weeks ago American Express started to claw back the statement credits when cardmembers try this.
- Historically people could get the Delta Stays credit to post and then later cancel for a refund without the credit being reversed
- Cancellations starting on or about January 29 started triggering the new clawback behavior, while many earlier cancellations did not.
- That means the Delta Stays credit now behaves like Amex Platinum’s Fine Hotels and Resorts credit.
Amex’s published Delta Stays benefit language includes the usual “credits may be reversed if refunded/canceled/modified” but it wasn’t enforced. Now it seems that Amex runs a ledger of eligible Delta Stays spend against credits issued. When a refund posts, it reduces eligible spend and triggers a credit reversal to keep credits aligned with net spend. That’s important because it’s preventing some of the workarounds that people are trying with this. And it’s even factoring for bookings made in one year for stays in the next.
Here’s one example from a Delta Business Gold cardmember:
- Booked $180 room on January 29
- Received $150 credit on February 1
- Refunded the room same day
- American Express reclaimed $135, not $150
- That’s because ‘last year they had booked $165, so $15 “rolled over,” reducing this year’s clawback by $15.’
That changes the card economics for many people who were previously gaming tihs, suggesting that the higher fee cards become harder to justify. However, if you’re really going to use the credits anyway this remains quite a valuable perk since – though it’s often an Expedia back end booking, with no loyalty credit – there are a lot more properties than the premium hotel booking credits offer like Fine Hotels and Resorts or The Edit.
Many people, by the way, wonder whether the Hilton Aspire resort credit clawback logic will change as well.
Statement credit reversals seem to take varying amounts of time. There was one person noting that their Gold card saw a reversal of the statement credit on the same day their refund posted, while two people wiht Reserve cards said their credit hadn’t (yet) reversed.
(HT: Miles Earn and Burn)
Thank you to everyone who kept talking about this online ad nauseam. We can’t have nice things in this hobby.
That RAT always gets fed.
@Thomas — Nice to see you, sir.
Good, people defrauding the system deserve to get burned. FAFO.
Good move by Amex. Scammers and max spend gamers shouldn’t benefit. Just use the cards as intended and you will be fine.
@ Gary — Glad to see this. People intetionally doing this should be banned by AMEX.
@ Thomas — Fraud = nice things? That’s America for you.
@Gene — Reminds me of ‘[Fraud] is not bad. It is only bad if I’m not involved. But if I’m part of that [fraud], I defend it!’ (Internet memes ftw, @1990)
@L737 — I’m here for the memes, the banter, the SUBs, and US261. (Still no C1 at LGA… what’r they waitin’ for?!) I’m checking out JFK’s soon, finally.
@1990 — Woohoo! Very excited for you. If all goes to plan I’ll be visiting T4 again in a couple months, I miss it. As for LGA I’m banking on next week!
@L737 — AND, later this year, Amex is supposed to open that new Centurion at EWR Terminal A.
@1990 – Veri nais! That would greatly improve QOL at EWR. Always good to have things to look forward to.
I’m sorry if u can afford the card but still need to scam AMEX out of 2 hundred? I’m the last guy to defend a cc company but…C’mon…!
This is a big nothingburger.
The DL hotel credit is one of the easiest to use as it applies to virtually every property in every major US hotel chain. Not luxury properties, not 2-night stays, no “spend $500 for $100 credit'” (Citi) nonsense. And a full calendar year to use it.
And the other nice thing is that there is no need to engage in monthly coupon book nonsense to offset the $150 AF on these cards (at least on the Delta Gold Biz card). One and done. Easy peasy.
Contrast to Chase Edit which only applies to 2-night stays at a minuscule selection of high end hotels, or even Amex FHR and THC.
Unfortunately these cards are almost a “must have” for anyone with a balance of skypesos. Otherwise you get shafted 15% on redemptions. There are also the ancillary benefits for those who don’t have DL elite status but don’t want to board last or pay for checked bags.
I’m glad that the people committing this fraud are being stopped. The more one steals from any company, the more expensive the product gets for the rest of us who don’t steal.
So so sad
I haven’t had an AMEX Credit Card in many years and loving life
They have no appeal to me compared to other premium cards
I was defrauded by Amex/Delta promotion, last year whe I was booking my trip to Brazil on Delta. I saw the promotion, applied for the Amex Gold, spent $3,000 in less than 6 months, received the promised 50,000 miles, but
Amex/Delta disappeared with 20,000 miles. I have the Amex statement showing that I earned 54,000 miles ! I close my account with Amex, but never got the 20,0000 miles back !