For the past 3 years the Citibank-issued American AAdvantage co-brand credit card has offered a 10% rebate on award redemptions.
You get 10% of the points you redeem back, up to 10,000 miles per year. You’re capped at 10,000 miles though no matter how many Citibank AAdvantage cards you may have.
Given that American’s systems have limited points-earning from this benefit, it was expected that you would only be able to earn 10,000 miles from rebates from the Citibank card and from the Barclays-issued card.
Now that the US Airways credit card from Barclaycard is an American AAdvantage card it too comes with a 10% rebate on redemptions capped at 10,000 miles per year.
It turns out that those of us who have both a Citibank AAdvantage card and a Barclays AAdvantage card get redemptions rebates from both and for the same redemptions. Unfortunately they aren’t posting 10% from each card for the same redemptions, they are splitting the rebate as two transactions half for each card.
Yesterday I redeemed 30,000 miles. Overnight a 1500 mile rebate posted from each of the Citi and Barclays cards. They’re certainly posting quickly.
(Click to enlarge)
Each transaction line is called a 10% bonus, but in fact each line represents a 5% bonus.
Of course those folks with legacy Barclays cards which come with 10,000 bonus miles at renewal continue to get that — so those cards earn up to 20,000 bonus miles per year (as long as you redeem 100,000 miles each year) for their $89 annual fee.
But do we know if it’s capped at 5,000 each or 10,000 each. The data point doesn’t seem to confirm either way.
Any trick to getting the rebates to post? My last three have never posted and I’ve had to have them manually credit
This just happened to me this morning, burned all my AAdvantage miles for a trip to Greece and then saw that 11,000 miles were in my account.
So here is the question.. am I only going to receive 10,000 miles total if I have 3 cards, or do I receive 10,000 max per redemption up to 30,000 total?
Do these mileage refunds post after you book the award ticket, or after you complete the award flight?
Old news. has been discussed on multiple threads on FT at least 2 weeks ago.
Actually on our redemption of 2 tickets it split the redemption 4 ways – 2500 each x 2 under Citi, 2500 each x 2 under Barclays. This was March 31. 18 days ago.
@DJ – after booking
FLL, and your point is?
I didn’t link my accounts and I booked two one way tickets back to Kathmandu on Etihad first class. Used 90,000 points on the original AA account and received 9,000 miles back. Used another 90,000 points on the newly assigned AA number through US Airways and got another 9,000 miles back. Now that I’ll probably cancel the US Airways card with Barclays since I won’t score anymore bonuses, I’ll probably combine both accounts now.
I didn’t link my accounts and I booked two one way tickets back to Kathmandu on Etihad first class. Used 90,000 points on the original AA account and received 9,000 miles back. Used another 90,000 points on the newly assigned AA number through US Airways and got another 9,000 miles back. Now that I’ll probably cancel the US Airways card with Barclays since I won’t score anymore bonuses, I’ll probably combine both accounts now.
This post made me check my AA account and I found out I didn’t get a rebate for the award ticket I booked in late January. Whom does one contact to get the manual adjustment, the credit card company or American Advantage miles department? Thanks!
@Daniel, it’s capped at 10,000 miles total regardless of how many/what cards you have open unfortunately.
I’ve been redeeming AA miles for CX travel, never seen any bonus returned. (Got the Citi card, so I should be eligible.) I wonder … is this only for redemptions on AA-operated award travel?
so the conclusion is you only get 10k miles back per AA account. maybe I should have prevented them from merging and I would end up with two aa accounts
Just called AAdvantage service. Representative claimed that the miles get credited after the award travel is flown.
Total confusion. A couple peoples’ experience seems to be there’s a 10K rebate cap on each while the formal rule is 10K rebate cap total.
Redeemed 120k miles, have both cards, 10k total rebate.
Slightly off-topic question. I’m AA EXP now, thanks to the US Air Preferred Challenge. Therefore I can cancel award ticket without a redeposit fee. What would happen to the 10% miles in this case, if I cancel an award ticket.
My award cancellations (before the US AA combination) clawed back the bonus miles.
Last time i did this, the miles were rebated shortly after i booked the tickets- certainly not after i actually flew the route
What a drag. I had to buy 3000 miles for a trip and then got the 3000 back in the account as soon as I booked. Expensive bonus miles!