We’ve had a few reports recently of readers who put qualifying digital entertainment purchases on their Amex Platinum cards expecting to trigger the digital entertainment credit only to discover that they hadn’t enrolled in the benefit prior to purchase (failure to enroll will prevent you from getting the credit), so we wanted to quickly highlight the fact that you need to enroll as well as how to enroll in the benefit.
In Greg’s case, he is 96% sure that 2 out of 3 Platinum cards in his household had enrolled in the benefit, but when he realized that he had not gotten the credit he went to his account benefits page and found that it said he was not enrolled on any of those cards. I don’t know whether the 4% chance that he forgot about it proved that a non-zero probability means anything can happen or whether there was some sort of glitch in his initial enrollment, but either way it is a good reminder to check for yourself to be sure you are enrolled (and to keep screen shots when you do this sort of thing in case you need to follow up with Amex about a credit you’re owed).
To see if you are enrolled, log in to your Platinum card account and click on “benefits”. If you are enrolled, you’ll see a tracker at the top of the page showing how much of your Digital Entertainment and Airline Fee credits you have used so far this year.
If you are not enrolled, you’ll see this as you scroll down the list of benefits:
Click “get started” and then scroll down and tick the box agreeing to the terms and conditions and hit “enroll now”.
After doing that, you should see the tracker at the top of your “Benefits” page.
Again, I believe that you’ll need to do this before you make a qualifying purchase, so it is possible that you’re out of luck for July if you’ve already made your charges. Someone in Frequent Miler Insiders asked what would happen if you enroll after making the purchase but before the purchase posts to your statement and I don’t know for sure. Hopefully it’ll still work, though my instinct is that you probably need to enroll before making the charge. We’ll see – but double check to make sure you’re enrolled even if you thought you already were.