A couple of days back I wrote about two different offers that Kim and I received for our AAdvantage Aviator Red cards from Barclays Bank.
Kim received a far superior and easier to earn bonus offer (which requires a certain amount of spend to be done on the card for three consecutive months).
In the post mentioned above, a reader left a comment with some very important information. It might even help prevent you from not receiving the bonus even when you think you’ve earned it!
To earn bonus offers for two recent offers from Barclaycard, a specified amount of spend needs to be placed on the card in a calendar month for 3 consecutive months. If you miss the spend during one month, you won’t earn the bonus.
(The other offer was for my Wyndham card.)
Reader Bob writes, “Just fyi, I did the “spend $500 per month for 3 months” offer recently. After following what I thought were the rules I eventually e-mailed Barclays because I did not see the 15,000 points post. I received the following (edited slightly for clarity) response:
“Upon review of your account, we show that the authorization made in September and October, were made on the last day of the month. The transactions did not post until to the account until the beginning of the following month. Typically an authorization takes 3 to 5 business days to post to the account as a transaction. As such the account currently will not receive the 15,000 bonus miles.”
So Barclays is saying that Bob will not receive the bonus since he made the spend on the last day of the month since it takes 3-5 business days to post.
This doesn’t really seem fair considering the spend was done within the month. The terms say spend in a month, not post within a month!
It seems that Barclays is being understanding with Bob’s situation. He wrote that “They submitted a “case” and seem to be moving towards allowing me the 15,000″
Bob shares some very important advice when it comes to Barclays Bonus Offers:
“Make sure you make your purchases 3-5 business days before the end of each month”.
I want to thank Bob for passing this info along!
Marty- I think you’d be surprised that many people do not know this. It really isn’t really clearly stated so I think many have an argument if they complete the spend within month!
These offers are targeted so if you get it great, if not, I don’t believe there is any way to request it.
Tom- Glad to hear that Barclays helped you out!
I had a similar issue with Barclays last year where I bought something online towards the end of a promotion and it posted a few days later. I had to ask nicely twice, but I eventually got the miles.
Without exception, every bonus offer I’ve ever used – and there have been a variety from various flavors of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express credit cards – were determined by the transaction POSTING dates; it’s common knowledge that transactions typically take several business days to post. This should be no surprise to anyone who reads Points or Miles blogs.
I do agree, however, that the rules should’ve been spelled out in all forms of the solicitation (e-mail, snail mailer, web ad, etc.).
My wife received this offer for 5,000 bonus AAdvantage miles, and my daughter received the same offer for 15,000 bonus AAdvantage miles on the same day (first via e-mail, a few days later via snail mailer). I didn’t receive it, perhaps because I just received 6,000 bonus AAdvantage miles from using my AAdvantage Aviator Mastercard for my first Rocketmiles reservation.
I looked everywhere for mention of signing up for the Barclaycard AAdvantage Aviator 3-month spend offer, but couldn’t find out how to sign up for the offer. Is it automatic, without signing up for it?
Bill- I agree with you- a month is a month and it sounds like Barclays will give him the bonus. The problem is what about the people that don’t call in and argue their case? They might lose out on the bonus points.
That is simply preposterous. The terms say spend in the month, nothing about posting in the month–because it’s preposterous to have terms about when something posts. Barclays simply is trying to avoid giving a bonus in good faith for a customer who behaved in good faith–and that is terrible customer service and bad business. Pathetic.