American Express has targeted many cardholders in recent months with offers to earn 10,000-30,000 bonus Membership Rewards simply for enrolling in Pay Over Time.
To have a chance of getting targeted for these offers, you need to ensure you’re not currently enrolled in Pay Over Time. However, Amex doesn’t make it obvious how to do that.
The nice thing is that unenrolling from Pay Over Time isn’t a convoluted process once you know how. You can both enroll and unenroll by using this link. Simply select the ‘Inactive’ radio button and click ‘Submit’.
There are a few reasons why you might want to unenroll from Pay Over Time if you’re currently enrolled:
- Future Targeting – If you’re enrolled in Pay Over Time, Amex isn’t going to target you with 10,000, 20,000 or 30,000 Membership Rewards points to enroll as you already have this feature. There’s no guarantee that unenrolling now will get you targeted for bonus points in the future, but you’ve got to be in it to win it.
- Interest – The purpose of Pay Over Time is to allow you to pay the cost of $100+ transactions over time. This is done by paying interest on that balance which isn’t something you ever want to do on any kind of card.
- Charge Card Vs Credit Card – Cards that are eligible to enroll in Pay Over Time like the Amex Gold, Platinum and Green cards are charge cards seeing as credit cards already have the option to pay over time and incur interest charges. Miles to Memories suggested in the past that enrolling in Pay Over Time might change how Amex views that card, changing it from a charge card to a credit card. With a limit of four (or sometimes five) credit cards at a time with Amex, that could have an effect on what other cards you’re able to get.
I think that final bullet point is a theory based on only a couple of past data points, so there’s no guarantee Amex will regard a Pay Over Time card as a credit card. However, the first and second bullet points – particularly the first one – are good enough reasons to unenroll from Pay Over Time if you haven’t already. For example, I’d been targeted for an offer giving 10,000 bonus points last year and subsequently unenrolled after earning those points. I was then targeted once again last week with an even better offer for 20,000 bonus points.
Something important to keep an eye on is that it seems to take at least a few days for the bonus points to be awarded. You’ll therefore want to wait until the bonus Membership Rewards have actually been awarded before unenrolling.
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When will we receive the bonus after enrolling in this?
[…] Son got another 20,000 AMEX Membership Rewards points after enrolling in this “Pay As You Go” feature. And this is how to unenroll to…wait for another promo to come back to do it again. Rinse and repeat! How To Unenroll From Amex Pay Over Time (And Why You Should). […]
Wow. I turned off Pay Over Time when I read this article on May 11, I just logged into Amex today (May 17) and there was the offer – 20,000 points to enroll in Pay over Time. Not even been a week. Thank you!
Nice!
The Pay over time button is in the mobile app. Click statements. Click pay over time.
I was enrolled in Pay Over Time by default on my Amex Plat while trying to make the SUB. The interest charges were outrageous, even though I paid on time. Called and complained, they removed the charges, but I thought it was sneaky.
You agreed to the financing charges when you created the plan
This stung us as well. Not sure exactly how it happened, but we were hit for considerably interest fees for purchases while the Pay Over Time flag was on even though our intent is to pay in full each month. I’m sure the legally required conditions and opt in / opt out possibilities were displayed, and we’re not naïve credit card people, but it still managed to get us for a month or two.
Yup. I got all charges refunded, but thought the practice of enrolling me with perhaps not-prominently displayed options, was kinda shady.
Read again, I was enrolled automatically and without my consent.
Even so you did not pay the balance in full , so they triggered the pay iver time interest instead of late fees?
I paid my balance in full. They charged interest over the course of the period, which resulted in interest charges that showed up at the payment period’s end.
Your story is incomplete or keeps changing. This has nothing to do with pay over time
Oh okay, Anonymous, thanks so much for your insightful comments.
I was 100% unaware that our card was enrolled for Pay Over Time. This month, when I saw a $50 interest charge on our account labeled Pay Over Time, I called Amex to dispute the mistake. They told me that all gold cardmembers accounts were automatically enrolled for POT back in 2021 for “all eligible purchases over $0.” Apparently an email went out; I didn’t see it.
We now see that Amex has charged us $800 in interest for POT charges we didn’t know we were making over the past 18 months. We thought we had been paying our balance in full every month! Had I looked at our pdf statements, I would have no doubt figured this out sooner. But as it is, I review the line item transactions in my online dashboard, and I pay the bill in full. There is no Pay Over Time button or tab or link anywhere to be found in my Amex dashboard. And when I type Pay Over Time into the search bar, it gives me a link to manage my POT settings. When I click that, it says POT is currently unavailable!
When I asked Amex customer service why there is no transparency about Pay Over Time settings, they said Account Managers might not have access to that but maybe the 2nd cardholder on my account does. What the hell?!
Amex refunded the last two months and deactivated my setting, but I had to open a whole investigation in order to request a refund of the rest. We’ll see. I think this is shady business at best, but possibly actually illegal. I smell a class action suit.
Unenrolled my 2 cards and 2 cards my wife has a couple weeks ago. No offer on any of the cards to turn the feature on.
“System is Temporarily not available” message when using your link. Same for all accounts. Tried from different browsers and from phone, same results. Normal Login works without issues.
I can’t remember how long ago I “unenrolled” for Pay Over Time, but it was a long time ago (at least a couple years, maybe much longer). But a few days ago, to my great surprise and delight, when I logged it, up popped an offer for 20K points for enrolling in POT. I was skeptical and took a screen shot, thinking it might later be ruled an error, clicked Accept, and now today, a few days later, I see I was indeed credited with the 20K MRs. Nice.
So, how long should I wait before un-enrolling again?
I got that same offer the other day and had the bonus points credit a day or two ago – I unenrolled today.
I thought there was a recent comment in Reddit that an Amex agent said they would remove the PoT bonus points if it wasn’t kept on for 12 months. Granted, agents are often wrong, but I’m guessing you aren’t worried about this?
Sorry, I thought I had replied to you when you originally commented. It’s Amex and so there’s always a chance that they’ll claw back the points, but many of us have earned the points, turned off Pay Over Time and not had them clawed back and so I’m not unduly worried about it.
Hey, Stephen. Just wanted to know if you had any take on CericRushmore’s comment about the need to keep POT for 12 months or risk losing the POT bonus. Should I be worried in removing POT after two months? Thanks!
I’ve just replied to CericRushmore as I hadn’t realized I’d neglected to do that. No, I’m not worried about the bonus points being clawed back. It’s always something of a possibility with Amex, but I’ve not heard any data points of people actually having their points clawed back after turning it off, so I’m comfortable enough taking the chance.
Ultimately, it’s not like with signup bonuses where it’s frustrating if you’ve put thousands of spend on a card only to have them claw back points. In this case, all I had to do was click a couple of buttons to earn the points and so if they did end up being clawed back, I’ve not lost anything other than a minute or two of my time.
Thanks! I guess I was more worried of AmEx going crazy and taking all of the points/closing the account, but I think that would be a drastic overreaction for switching off POT. Just to be on the safe side, though, I think I’ll keep it on for another month and then turn it off.
Right now I have 10 Amex cards with them handing out Biz cards like confetti
Amex Every day, Hilton Aspire, Blue cash pfd, Gold, Blue Biz Plus, Blue Biz cash, 2 Biz Gold and 2 Biz Platinum
I will be cancelling Hilton Aspire and the older of the Biz Gold and Platinum when the renewal date arrives. Probably the Everyday as well later as useless card – downgraded from Everyday pfd to avoid the annual fee
This link seems to be not working?
Well, I tried on one login where only my platinum card is in that login and it still worked as described. The link that did not work is the login contains more than just the platinum card.
Well this certainly proved helpful! I unenrolled my Gold card from Pay Over Time when I saw this post 3 weeks ago. And then today I logged into my account to see an offer for 20,000 MR for enrolling again!
That’s great, although I’m a little bit jealous!
Wow, Great info!
Thanks…I just unenrolled both my platinum and Green Cards. I never knew how to deactivate it. I always pay in full so I don’t need it but I want those targeted free points to get me to add it back again.
Wow! Excellent article! Who knew? So many of these blogs are just repeats of no information and blah blah blah. Nice to see one that actually has information we can use
After enrolling when targeted for the promo, how long do you think to wait until unenrolling? 20k bonus points posted within 2 days.
Hmm….good question. I doubt you’d be targeted for another bonus on the same card immediately, so I’d personally give it at least a couple of weeks.