The American Airlines eShopping portal is theoretically offering lots of opportunities to earn large amounts of American Airlines miles and thereby Loyalty Points in the new program that starts on 3/1/22. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of issues with offers not posting as expected. On last week’s podcast, I noted that I wouldn’t lose much sleep over offers that required no spend and failed to post. Unfortunately, we’re now seeing miles get clawed back on Verizon prepaid orders, which is something we had written about and most certainly wasn’t free for many people.
This is obviously bad news for anyone who opened prepaid lines with Verizon. Taken along with a number of other clawed-back offers, it reflects poorly on the AA shopping portal experience.
In my case, while the orders above all show $0, each of the prepaid orders cost about $40 at least (and one of my orders was a $78 order). Some of my orders were made with credit cards that featured card-linked offers (there was a Chase Offer for $30 back on $40 and an Amex Offer for $75 back on $75 that both required enrollment). However, some of my orders were made at the full price of the first month.
I did not renew any of my lines for a second month and I ported some of the numbers to Visible mobile, but I didn’t port every line out. I don’t know for sure that these are getting clawed back for everyone, but at the least they are getting clawed back for some of us as it was a comment on our post about how to earn loyalty points without flying that alerted me to the clawback.
Note that I see these clawbacks listed in the AAdvantage eShopping portal but they haven’t yet come out of my AAdvantage account balance. I expect they will be subtracted soon as they have already come out of my learnings total within the portal. I wouldn’t recommend trying to spend the miles before they get clawed back as I doubt that American will look fondly on that behavior and wouldn’t be surprised to see tickets cancelled if they were booked with clawed-back miles.
The American Airlines eShopping portal is quickly becoming a frustrating experience for many. While I gave the portal a pass on offers where no spend was required, the truth is that portal terms haven’t prohibited most of the ways people have earned miles and seen them clawed back (and in fact in the case of this prepaid offer, terms specifically included prepaid lines at the time the orders were placed). I know that most shopping portal issues aren’t on the portal end but rather the merchant end. That is to say that if the merchant doesn’t pay up on the commission, whether or not the merchant is correct in failing to pay out, the portal isn’t going to pay the customer in most instances (though we sometimes see portals step to the plate and pay out of pocket). I could give the American Airlines portal a pass here and there for issues where a merchant wrote poorly-worded terms and failed to deliver what they promised — that is somewhat out of the portal’s hands. However, this is becoming an annoying trend with the American Airlines portal and it makes it hard to know which offers are going to be honored and are thus worth pursuing.
I’ll probably follow up on these orders since I did spend a more-than-nothing amount of money on the lines and followed the terms of the offer, but any way you slice it this definitely sours me on using the American Airlines eShopping portal on my quest for American Airlines elite status. Thank goodness I did port some of the lines to Visible, which should at least make me whole (and then some) despite the disappointment here.
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[…] American Airlines eShopping clawing back miles for Verizon orders. – Miles and points people often do some wacky stuff in order to maximize the rewards that we earn. One thing that I’m not willing to do is to spend money on things I don’t need or want in order to earn miles that may get clawed back. These companies are paying attention to shady practices and there’s a good chance that you’ll get caught. It sucks for people that spent money hoping for a big miles payday, but that’s the risk you take when you play in the grey areas. […]
Looks like finally all my Verizon transactions for January 17 and 18th are showing Pending as of April 22nd in the AA Shopping Portal. Not sure what that means. Hopefully they pay out!!
I did the Verizon prepaid deal in January, kept it active nd used it for about 3.5 weeks, and then ported it away from Verizon before month 2. I got the 6200 AA miles pretty quickly after signing up, got it included in a batch of AA Loyalty points on March 1, and then the 6200 miles were clawed back in the shopping portal on March 3. So far there’s not any negative Loyalty Points activity to correspond with that.
I filed a demand letter and suggest y’all do the same. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/34004531-post339.html
Any response or result?
No resp but my RDM+LP posted in March!
So do you attribute getting the miles to the demand letter?
[…] American Airlines eShopping clawing back miles for Verizon orders by FM. […]
Define clawback at the beginning of your article. Not everyone is familiar with non-standard English idioms.
Is that a nonstandard term? I just checked several dictionaries out of curiosity due to your comment and they all suggest that the phrasal verb “claw back” and noun “clawback” have been in use since the 1950s. Those are pretty common terms in this field, so it didn’t occur to me to define that any more than it did to define shopping portal, but it’s always good to be reminded of things that may not be familiar to some readers. If it wasn’t clear throughout the course of the post, the shopping portal has taken back miles that it previously awarded.
Well, I am a native English speaker and I could not tell who was doing the clawing back here. Do you mean AA is clawing them back from YOU or Verizon or what? Thanks.
This is ridiculous! Options: 1) write AAS 2) write AA 3) chargeback (60 day window under FRCA, may be longer) 4) arbitration.
Personally, I will contact AAS every 2 weeks and start CCing AA customer service and higher ups until I get my miles. If that fails will file AAA. It’s very profitable but also a slog. All this BS is making my hate AA and I’ve only had good experiences on board. My new year’s resolution was to destress so this is just great.
Here are my templates, which can be customized for other sites:
Greetings Cartera dba AA Shopping, This is my 1st inquiry. I purchased a in exchange for Base Miles. Please credit the promised Base Miles and Loyalty Points. Thank you. Yours, Case 001
Greetings Cartera dba AA Shopping and AA Customer Service, This is my 2nd inquiry. I purchased a in exchange for Base Miles. Please credit the promised Base Miles and Loyalty Points. Thank you. Yours, Case 001
Greetings Cartera dba AA Shopping and AA Customer Service and Mr. UpperMgmt, This is my 3rd inquiry. I purchased a in exchange for Base Miles. Please credit the promised Base Miles and Loyalty Points. Thank you. Yours, Case 001
https://www.verizon.com/support/arbitration-faqs/
https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/in9m7b/guide_to_arbitration/
So this gets weirder. Verizon mentions BBB arbitration, which I have never heard of. Turns out BBB does do arb and they even have a webpage dedicated to Verizon. Talk about repeat players! https://bbbprograms.org/programs/all-programs/VerizonDisputeResolution
American Airlines is a joke, terrible customer service.
I also only did 1 order on 1/18/22, did not transfer the # or anything, and have not been clawed back (yet). Hopefully it says. Good luck to all.
[…] case of AAdvantage eShopping taking miles back from customers who followed the rules, here’s why I predicted we’d see more of […]
So, I guess the best strategy is to do chargebacks at this point? It sounds like no one is getting the points. So might as well as start doing chargebacks now?
I made a complaint against Cartera Commerce on the Better Business Bureau website: https://www.bbb.org/us/ma/lexington/profile/marketing-programs/cartera-commerce-inc-0021-123658
I submitted the same info needed to submit a missing miles claim to the AA shopping portal. It was not difficult, just a PITA.
WITHIN 24 HOURS THE POINTS WERE PENDING IN MY ACCOUNT. FOUR DAYS LATER THEY ARE CONFIRMED.
Thank you so much! This worked for me as well.
I ordered a prepaid line on the morning of Jan 19th. At the time I clicked through the language was still present on the portal stating the miles for prepaid line offer. Later that day the offer was pulled down from the portal as discussed. I never did get the miles for the Verizon purchase so I waited 15 days and filed the claim with the portal explaining what happened in detail with documentation. A friendly rep responded and confirmed that prepaid lines did count towards the offer as of Jan 19 and that they would investigate and follow up. So far nothing, but it’s only been a few days. I’m looking forward to seeing the outcome of this.
Perhaps they clawed back miles where it was more than one deal per loyalty account? I think we are looking at the offer language and assuming they are backtracking on the prepaid aspect when in reality they may be backtracking on the multiple purchases per account aspect?
This is exactly my situation, except that my order for a single line was even a bit closer to the point they pulled it, sometime early afternoon EST on January 19. Never showed up as tracked order, and obviously no miles yet. I filed the missing miles form with all the supporting documentation on February 4, and a rather friendly representative responded to confirm that the offer on January 19 was for 6,200 miles. They wrote that they were “going to investigate with the merchant to find out why the order was not credited and attempt to obtain commission for it in order to pass it back to you.”. Well, let’s see, obviously not very hopeful here.
My miles posted today. They made it right!
I’m getting tired of the clawbacks. I’ve had 2 so far where I did everything they asked. Thrive Market clawed be back after I bought $200 in groceries AND the $60 membership!
Are you considering doing a chargeback? Wonder if the credit card company would even allow you to file one
Can’t now that I’ve bought $200 in groceries, some of which I’ve eaten/used. I have a complaint in with AA shopping, so we’ll see…
Why would they clawback Thrive? Did you stack with Amex or a Chase offer and maybe that’s why?
No! I didn’t stack with anything. My second purchase I used the Amex offer, but that’s weeks after I already paid the membership fee and bought $140 in groceries.
This exact thing is happening to me now. I signed up in late January and got the miles on the membership an bought $120 in groceries. I like it so much I referred my mom to it. Now I see a clawback pending on the portal on Feb 9.
I like it too but unless they fix the clawback they’ve lost me. It’s frankly dishonest and I won’t patronize a business that treats its customers like that.
Yep, agreed. The clawback is no longer pending, it’s been removed from my AA account. I submitted a ticket to the portal, but I think I may just be wasting my time.
Update: received an email from AA shopping customer care just now, asking me to upload my e-receipt to Cartera. I did that. (In app, go to Review Purchases.). Will keep you posted on the result.
I also got a response from them, but I deleted the original Thrive email long enough ago that it is no longer available. Offered to screenshot my account if they needed. Will see if the original email is required. I probably should start a folder with these sign up emails in them and keep for months for just this kind of issue.
Final update (I think): After providing 2 verifying documents, AA shopping agreed to restore the points. That’s fine for the result, but I’m betting that for every one of me there are 5 more who either don’t keep track or won’t go to the trouble to fix.
Update on my end. I had to send them documents to verify that I met the terms and they did restore my miles, but make sure you check because mine reposted to AA as bonus miles this time instead of base miles. While it’s nice to get the miles, the goal is for status. I guess I need to contact AA and try and get them converted. No idea if they will do this for me or not.
OY Vey!
I only did one order, but the miles are still showing for it and no clawback. Hopefully it stays that way.