We just received word from a reader who was charged a cash advance fee when purchasing American Express gift cards with his Barclay’s US Airways Mastercard.
The reader who has been a reliable source in the past, was charged a $105.15 cash advance fee on a $2102.95 purchase of Amex gift cards. The purchase and fee have posted within the past couple of days.
At this time we have only received the one data point, but I urge everyone to use caution. One commenter on today’s Quick Deal mentioned that this may be associated with a glitch that has possibly been resolved. It is still too early to tell what this means.
In the mean time I have updated The complete guide to Amex gift cards to reflect this information. Please share your experiences in the comments.
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Barclay Arival + also charged cash advance fee for purchase in Giftcardmall via Ebay. I bet if I purchase directly in GiftCardMall website, I would be charged fee as well.
I was charged a CA fee on a personalized AGC purchase made on March 7th.
I now have two separate cash advance fee’s from two orders of AMEX GC’s ordered on March 5th. I am going to call and see if they can be reversed.
Update: Had to call AMEX GC (terrible customer service) and file a complaint. Then I had Barclay additionally call them to file a complaint as well. Barclays said they would take care of it with them. Barclays reported that AMEX coded the transactions as Cash Advance instead of Financial Institution which triggered the fee. This was a one or two day mistake AMEX is not owning up to.
Purchased $2k on 3/5, posted without any cash fees so far on US Air.
Barclay just told me that they would not be able to make a change that would allow them to charge a cash advance fee. They also said that that coding would have had to come from Amex gift cards.
I had just purchased an amount that was greater than my cash advance limit. I think it would have been rejected if they were going to charge a fee.
Interestingly, I was approved by American Express within minutes on this purchase. Previously, I have had to wait hours to be approved and also get declined about 25% of the time. Same card, same address. Funny shit!
my order was posted today from the 3rd , did not charge. i have arrival plus.
Ordered Amex cards today. Ordered $3K more than the cash advance limits on my card. That leads me to believe transaction not treated as cash advance.
Ordered Amex cards today. Ordered $3K more than the cash advance limits on my card. That leads me to believe transaction not treated as cash advance.
Ordered Amex cards today. Ordered $3K more than the cash advance limits on my card. That leads me to believe transaction not treated as cash advance.
This same person asked the same question on the FlyerTalk AGC thread. He was charged a CA fee because he made the purchase on March 2nd and Amex was having issues that day so orders were being charged as a cash advance to all non-Amex CCs, not just Barclays. They were back to normal purchases the next day.
Not really true. I reported to frequent miler via email. I haven’t posted on flyer talk yet but I will do soon. My handle on ft is ramkashyap. Could be a different user in this situation.
Maybe so, but someone posted on FT mentioning that same amounts. Either way it was an issue Amex was having on Monday. It was resolved the next day.
If it helps, I spoke got the bank and they credited the amount. I am going to hold off using that card for the time being. I will give a shot next week for a small amount and report how it goes.
Do you know how long Amex Gift Card typical approve or reject an order? I purchase $10K at 9:00 EST time but I haven’t got any approved or reject email. I call amex customer serrvice and was told to wait for 24 hours.
@Jonathan – Normally it’s really fast, but today my order hasn’t been approved or denied yet either. I did get the order received email though.
Typically for me, if I use an Amex-issued card, the approval is very quick (max 1 hour, typical 15 minutes). If I use a non-Amex issued card, then it’s taken anywhere from 2 hours to 24 hours.
Hopefully this was just a glitch as mentioned, because I ordered 2k on my A+ card today.
With the 2.25% CB today and 1.5 miles/purchase on US Air cards, we’ll be getting plenty of data on this soon enough. I personally bought $4k on my card today. Any way to tell how it was charged until it actually posts? I can see it under pending authorizations, and my revolving credit has been reduced by the same amount.
In our reader’s case the cash advance fee posted the day after the charge.
Clean on my account so far….
Had USAir Barclay’s card charge cash advance for contributing to a new credit union savings account (which I thought was safe given report on people using Barclay’s World Arrival + to open citibank account up to $75k).
Not sure if this is a helpful data point.