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UPDATE: Many who have tried this deal have had their DIRECTV payments reversed. Please see this post for details.
Remember the Amazing Amex deal — $150 free for AT&T customers? If you have an Amex business card and were targeted for this offer, you still have until April 15th 2015 to get your free money. And, if you weren’t targeted, here’s another option…
The above offer is very similar to the AT&T offer except that with this one you have to browse to enroll.amexnetwork.com/US/en/DirecTVOPEN/ to register your Amex business card. This is great because it makes it possible to register any Amex business card you have, even employee cards. I was easily able to register two primary cards and two employee cards to this offer.
So what? Who has DIRECTV for Business anyway? Well, a reader named Eric reports that he enrolled several of his Amex business cards and used them to pay his personal (not business) DIRECTV bill. And, he did receive the $100 statement credit for the payment!
Register by January 31 2015
You have until March 31 to spend $100 with each registered Amex card, but you must enroll those cards by January 31st. Don’t forget! Even if you don’t have immediate plans to pay DIRECTV for anything, you might as well sign up just in case.
What if you don’t have DIRECTV?
The easy answer is to find a friend with DIRECTV and offer to pay $100 to his bill in exchange for, say, $50.
How long does it take to get the statement credit?
Usually this varies a bit from one case to another, but here was Eric’s experience when he made a $100 payment online to his personal account:
- 12/16 – Charge Posted for $100.00 – DIRECTV SERVICE 800-347-3288 CA
- 12/18 – Credit of $100 shows as posted – DIRECTV INC EL SEGUNDO with the text DirecTV100Back
- 12/19 – Thank You E-mail was sent by Amex
- 12/19 – While the credit shows as posting on 12/18, Eric did not see it in his online Amex account until 12/19.
You cannot prepay more than $100
Eric tried using multiple registered Amex cards to prepay his DIRECTV service far in advance. Unfortunately, after the first $100, Eric’s payments were reversed out. So your best bet is to use registered Amex cards to pay your bill in January, February, and March, but don’t try to prepay more than $100 at a time.
Eric, THANKS for all of this helpful information!
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[…] $100 free for DIRECTV customers! – American Express business cardholders who registered for this promotion must use it by March 31 to get the credit. […]
[…] $100 free for DIRECTV customers! – American Express business cardholders who registered for this promotion must use it by March 31 to get the credit. […]
[…] $100 free for DIRECTV customers! – American Express business cardholders who registered for this promotion must use it by March 31 to get the credit. […]
The plot thickens!
I made the payment on 2/9, my DirecTV account was credited $100 (as of this morning, no credit has appeared on my AMEX activity).
BUT, there was also a Payment Correction (credit) of $100 applied to my DirecTV account on 2/12. So 2 x $100 credits applied to my account in 3 days.
Perhaps a reversal of the 1/23 reversal? Bizarre – I am keeping a close eye on it. Whatever happens next will not surprise me!
@Simon, I’m seeing the same thing. I’d made one pre-payment which was then reversed. Then we got the mean call… So we paid online again. A few days later that was reversed. As soon as the account showed due, I paid by automated phone system. All 3 accounts show a $100 charge followed by reversal. That said, my recent activity now shows two “Pmt Corrctn-CC” entries for $100 each as of 2/9/15 and the account balance is now solidly negative. The final state seems to be that Directv now shows 3 payments of $100 each applied by Amex shows them all offset by a credit.
If thinks weren’t so stinking weird, I’d say this is where I was trying to get to all along… 3 payments, 3 credits at amex.
Fingers crossed.
I’ve had a similar experience, but I’ve only made one payment per AMEX card (or per AU card). You guys are getting multiple $100 credits on the same cards? If so, please keep us posted. Very interesting.
@marshdom, no I’ve got 5 qualifying cards and used 3 of them in succession to try to get a payment to stick. I’ve not tried repeating any specific card.
Honestly, correlating the whole transaction history is just messy. Bottom lines at Amex and Directv now agree however and I’d be a happy camper if that was it!
If I tried to interpret what was happening, it’d be this:
1) Directv accepts payment, bills Amex.
2) Amex accepts charge, goes pending, and we get Congrats! email.
3) A couple days later, charge is final and the same time or very shortly after a $100 credit appears at Amex.
4) Directv, for some really odd reason, _thinks_ the credit at Amex is a reversal so they reverse on their end and you get rude, confusing call from them.
…Fast forward to 2/9.
5) Directv gets things figured out and realizes the issue, applies “Pmt Corrctn-CC” to reapply your payment on their side (reversing step 4). No change at Amex.
I really don’t understand how #4 occurs if my hypothesis is correct that the credit on our Amex bills is applied by Amex. Directv shouldn’t have access to my Amex account history, I’d think…
…Unless there’s some behind the scenes collaboration between Amex and Directv on this promo. Perhaps Amex is doing some sort of a chargeback or something to Directv and this their awareness of it. Dunno…and that’s all behind the scenes anyway and pure speculation.
Bottom line for me is that if things stopped here, I’d be a happy camper.
First autopay charge for my friend just went pending today against my 4th card. Fingers crossed. Next month, my friend will hit the 5th card of 5.
Thanks for the clarification and run-down of your experience. Suffice to say that I had a very similar experience.
Paid $100 towards a friend’s personal DirecTV bill late January and it was reversed a few days later on Jan 30th.
Just got my latest bill, and I’ve made a $100 payment (my Jan payment, which put the account in a credit, was reversed – see above comment January 23, 2015 at 11:36 am)
Let’s see what happens. I’ll report back in a few days.
[…] $100 free for DIRECTV customers! – American Express business cardholders who registered for this promotion must use it by March 31 to get the credit. […]
[…] I published what appeared to be a fantastic deal for DIRECTV customers with Amex business cards: $100 free for DIRECTV customers! The basic deal was this: you had to register your Amex business card for this promo by […]
I also received the reversal of $100 a couple of days ago. I had used my Business Gold Card on a personal account that had a balance on it. My husband mentioned that we got a few weird messages from DirecTV :/ Oh well, at least the AT&T one worked! If anyone’s interested in paying $150 on my AT&T bill, we can do a $75/$75 split. Nikkioutten@live.com
The reversal problem happens only if the $100 payment makes your balance negative. To solve it, buy movies until your current bill exceeds $100. For example, if your monthly bill is $89, charge $11+ in movies, then pay. Problem solved!
I received the same call from DirecTV, saying AMEX had reversed the charge. The credit says “DIRECTV100BACK”. I haven’t bothered escalating with AMEX because I’m not really in the right per the terms, but it seems weird that DirecTV is claiming it was a chargeback.
DTV billing methodology is really unconventional and whacked. I think it is now run by Skynet. Even the reps I spoke to don’t seem to truly understand how it works – and this is not even talking about the $100 promo.
You are billed for current purchases such as movies, etc immediately (show as $$ owed on your account page) but are not billed for monthly charges such as service until your statement “print date” and those charges are for a future period not for the current period which ended on your bill “due date”. Your bill due date and print date are related but different. What you owe for service cannot be viewed until your bill print date which is after your bill due date. You will still see $0 for service charges on your bill due date even though it is due. Charges will only show on the bill print date. This is confusing me even as I write it. If anyone else has figured this all out, please explain. I spoke to 5 reps who couldn’t coherently do it, but I will say they tried at least. Nice people they are. If you are a masochist, please call the DTV billing dept today.
With all that being said, I believe DTV is regurgitating these overpayments and the reps are clueless. Why would AE reject a formerly approved payment to DTV on an AE card if you have the credit line to pay for it? They might refuse the $100 rebate credit but there would be no logical reason (I can think of) where they would initiate a charge reversal. I mean if I’m AE, let the customer pay for the $100 if they want to, and we’ll just not issue the credit. Then again what the hell do I know.
This is truly scary.
Got a call from DirecTV and they said my payment was denied. I only prepaid $100. Guess they are noticing that people are using business cards to pay? I’m unsure what else it could be. According to the social media support people *I* “disputed the transaction with AMEX”
I did this a few weeks ago when I saw it posted. The $100.00 posted then was credited. Today I got a call from Directv claiming my bill was past due. I use autopay and had a ZERO balance. Zero balance having nothing to do with the $100.00 as my regular card was billed in full for the monthly service. I made that conversation quick with DTV. When my contract is up in two months look out DTV because I go to the best deal. I will see what Dish offers me.
This is pervasive among many companies. If you leave autopay on, they will deduct your statement balance or minimum despite you paying off your statement balance in full manually. DISH may do the same thing.
Among credit card companies, Barclay and BofA are notorious for this. Say you pay $5,000 manually which is your statement balance in full, they will still deduct another $5,000 from your autopay IF you leave it on. This has happened to me. I learned the hard way. Their system could care less and is not programmed to consider your manual payment is in lieu of your statement payment. I have never seen a blog post regarding these kinds of issues. Hint.
American Express and Chase have their act together and will stop autopay if your statement balance is paid manually.
Barclay came out with a mass e-mail about 6 months ago, saying they are trying to fix that issue and reduce any autopay if some is paid manually but they still did the same thing to me a month ago. I was testing with a small amount.
Advice, call DTV each year and ask for the “retention” dept. The freebies can be many. Google what people get by calling that dept. I’ve gotten the NFL Sunday Ticket free multiple times and various other monthly credits. You don’t have to threaten you will cancel, be civil. But refuse to talk to anyone but the retention dept if you want some substantial offers. They will transfer you. If the first person in the retention dept doesn’t satisfy you, don’t take their offer. Call back and try again.
I had my charge hit on 1/21 for $101 and then received the $100 DirecTV credit on my AMEX account 1/23. Yesterday I looked at my DirecTV account and they reversed out $100 “REVRS CC PMT”… we’ll see if I get the reversal back on my AMEX account… Anyone have this happen and then also receive the reversal back onto your AMEX account? Hopefully that is the case.
I too was able to get multiple $100 credits for consecutive prepayments. 1 payment on the 23rd, $100 statement credit posted on 24th. 3 more $100 payments on the 24th and the statement credits just posted today. Dtv still shows a negative $400+ balance. No reversals (at least not yet).
Dave – congrats if it sticks! Please keep us posted. I assume you just made one-time payments to your online Directv account? As I (and others) mentioned (above), I had my second payment reversed (before the credit hit). I also got the strange call from Directv a couple days ago (a few days after the reversal), from a very confused agent who didn’t seem to know why she was calling. After fumbling around for a minute, she finally tried to tell me that my disputed charge was reversed. I told her that I hadn’t disputed a charge, but she was clearly confused and tried to end the call as quickly as possible.
Wow I had the same experience. The woman who talked to me seemed to not know what to say. I was suspicious that it was a phishing call. I wouldn’t verify my address with her. She still seemed confused and said my payment was declined. I told her I’d look at it myself online.