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Readers are reporting that portals are failing to pay out for their recent Kohl’s and Amex gift card purchases. What’s going on?
Online shopping portals can be a fantastic way to earn extra points, miles, or cash back. Usually, the idea is to go through a shopping portal to buy things you would have bought anyway so as to get a nice extra rebate for that purchase. Sometimes, though, shopping portal rewards are so lucrative that it can make sense to buy things you don’t really want with the goal of reselling the items or liquidating them in other ways to get most of your money back. Regardless of your motivation for using shopping portals, there is always a risk that, for whatever reason, the portal will fail to pay you the miles, points, or cash back you were expecting.
There are many reasons that a portal transaction may fail. Problems can come from your side: cookies not enabled, a browser toolbar stealing the click-through referral, etc. Or, the problem can be on the merchant’s side: they fail to report the transaction to the portal, they report the wrong dollar amount for the transaction, they incorrectly believe the transaction is not valid for portal payouts, etc. Or, the problem can be with the portal itself: technical issues between the portal and the merchant, tracking issues, etc.
Often, portals don’t fail, but they are slow. I’ve increasingly seen a trend where large purchases ($500 and up, typically) can take many weeks to show up as tracked purchases in a portal. And, sometimes this is a systematic issue where many people are effected. Here are a couple of recent posts where I and others have had to wait many weeks to see if our purchases posted correctly:
Waiting and watching for points to post: Last year, Sears ran a fantastic promotion through the MileagePlus Shopping portal where they offered up to 16 miles per dollar. Most people eventually received all of the miles they expected, but for many it took weeks for the miles to appear.
Waiting (and hoping) for Amex gift card 3X miles to post: In December of last year, both the Delta SkyMiles portal and the Alaska MileagePlan Shopping portal offered 3 miles per dollar for Amex gift cards purchased via their portals. While some small transactions posted promptly, most of us had to wait a long time. It took a full 4 weeks for my miles to post, for example.
Current Issue: Amex gift cards
When Barclaycard’s Arrival RewardsBoost portal offered 4 miles per dollar last month for Amex gift card purchases, many jumped on that deal. Unfortunately, around mid-month, the portal seemed to have stopped paying out. In my case, for example, purchases made February 11th and earlier, posted quickly to the portal. Purchases made February 12th and later have yet to post at all. Similarly, purchases I made in February via the Alaska MileagePlan Shopping portal have not yet posted at all. People have reported similar experiences in the comments of this Quick Deal.
Current Issue: Kohl’s
Through the comments in the Frequent Miler Laboratory, and comments on this Quick Deal post, I’ve learned that Kohl’s seems to have stopped paying out portal rewards for most people as of early to mid-February.
Failure or delay?
With the recent Kohl’s and Amex gift card issues, my best guess is that portal payouts are simply delayed. I’m used to portal payouts taking up to a month to post even with merchants that usually payout within days. If you can’t wait, it doesn’t hurt to contact the portal’s customer support. Sometimes people do get their payouts more quickly that way. The trouble is if you didn’t comply exactly the the terms and conditions of the portal offer. For example, the T&C for Amex gift cards usually says that you can’t use discount codes not found on that portal. In practice, the portals usually payout anyway, but a little thing like that can make it hard to get help from the portal’s customer service team.
Of course, I could be wrong. It’s possible that the portals won’t pay out at all for these transactions. I’d suggest waiting at least a month from your transaction date before giving up on it. If a month comes and goes without a payout, you might get help from the portal’s customer service team, or you might not. Using a portal is always a bit of a gamble.
See also:
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Transaction showed up on Arrival portal after a few days. MileagePlan took over a month to show up.
Yay! Got all my points from kohls today from the February orders.
Very happy.
Never got an email about bonus points, just check your accounts.
[…] the beginning of the month, I posted “Portal woes” where I wrote about people waiting for portal points to post for Amex gift cards bought through […]
I can always just use them but would like to try and earn as many miles as possible.
We don’t know yet if it is permanent, but yes Kohls is currently gone from the UR mall
Yikes, im still sitting on a load of GCs. Whats the next best option to burn GCs? Thanks!
Sell them to me!
I will buy them from you as well.
tabascov@yahoo.com
Kohls is Gone from UR mall permanently ?????
kohls is gone from ur mall
is there any portals paying out for Kohls now that UR is no longer paying out?
I used ebates for this last round of sales on kohls a couple days ago and already got the pending cashback notices. I don’t think it’s a problem on Kohl’s end of things.
has anyone tried going through UR portal and paying with a chase card? have they received their points?
I wonder if everyone is not getting the points or is it just certain accounts.
I did 2 purchases at the end of february going thru UR, using the discount codes on UR, and paying with my chase card. Still no points pending.
I know I can call chase and get the points, but trying to wait it out.
Don’t know if kohl’s is having technical issues on commission side, or if theyre just saying FU to certain people???
I use the Freedom with UR all the time and always get the bonus in about 15 days…….If I ever have any issue I use the Secure Message on my banking/charge card web page to email them and ask a question…..it takes about 24 hours to get a response…….That is a lot easier than waiting on hold on a customer service line and then not have anything in writing…….I also think they got slammed on EOY bonus as it took until February to get all my bonus points posted………Hope this helps you!
Using AA portal quite frequently and the miles almost always post, just takes awhile. I did have issues in the past with bonus spend promos never paying out. Does contacting customer service ever result in portals posting missing points?
Yes, it sometimes helps
Same here with Kohls. Thousands of points pending since mid Feb. Rep on phone told me could take up to 45 days.
Although, when checking the T&C it does state:
“Online Bonus Earn:
You earn bonus rewards for purchases made with your Chase Account (Chase credit card or debit card) through
the Ultimate Rewards Mall located at http://www.chase.com.”
And then it goes on to state:
“Providers reserve the right to reverse the posting of any bonus rewards in the event that a transaction is cancelled, returned or otherwise reversed, or in the event that a Merchant makes a determination that a transaction was ineligible, abusive, fraudulent or involved gaming behavior.”
So, that being said….I don’t use my Chase card to make the purchases. So, if they are enforcing (like some other portals have), then possibly we could see an end to this?
I hope not, although, I will switch portals until I see my points post.
Why not just use the Freedom card and ensure the bonus plus a annual 10% bonus? Never had a problem with UR posting within 14 days if I use my Freedom there…….AA Shopping portal took 10 weeks………
some coupons dont work with other than store CC.
I am also still waiting on a ton of points from Kohl’s. None of the purchases I have made after Feb. 8 have posted to UR. From Feb 8-14, I made several large purchases using the 30% code and my kohl’s card. This has always worked in the past.
At the end of february, I made a couple purchases using the 15% codes on UR, and used my sapphire card to pay, and even those aren’t showing.
Something is going on on the Kohls end. Either they are purposely changing the way they do things (and maybe limiting certain customers??) or just technical errors.
I’m fairly convinced i wont see the points from middle of february.
Hoping things get back to normal soon. (very soon!)
any news on the Kohls front? I still have not seen anything post as of yet.. its been almost 3 weeks.. I am surprised I havent heard much about it.
@DeltaPoints I actually got burned by TopCash. I filed a claim, and 2 months later, they tell me that my claim is denied because some other portal took the credit… Now THAT’S a first… This is even though I went through the entire ritual of having to reset all cookies, and restarting the browser etc… I have all the ad blockers and add-ons turned off ….but BLEH!
YMMV
As an example of how quirky portals are I recently received over 500 points via AA just for going to JCrew through their portal, putting items in a cart to checkout, but never actually making the purchase. Verified that no charges to my CC were made but received the points none the less. This will help compensate for the numerous times that points haven’t posted in the past. Weird stuff. Still waiting for the February bonus point promo to post though.