I am now almost certain that SD is causing this Amex denial, and has caused the Chase Sapphire denial as well. Search for the Chase Sapphire thread on SD, more than 95,000 views!!!
I am very suspicious, up until the last two weeks, I have had no problems matching codes. Now I have been trying for a whole week to match the Amex Gold Biz, and they won't budge.
I wonder if there is any way to have SD delete that thread.
Just a thought:
These points must cost the credit card companies quite a bit of money. If you can get a $1,000 HD card from Amex for 100,000 points, Amex must be paying HD close to $1,000. They only offer these deals to lure customers into getting these cards, so that they should rack up large bills and the credit card companies can make a fortune off of the interest.
If Amex, or any other CC company suspects that you are taking them for a ride, then they will throw you overboard.
My theory is that if any senior financial officer at Amex knew about this bonus "matching" thing, they would shut it down instantly. The luck we have is that when you call or SM Amex, you are talking to a lower lever CSR (usually Indian) who is trained to be nice and helpful, and could not care less if they give away $1,000 of Amex's money.
Now, since there are so many CSR's, even if a thousand people call or SM asking to match a code, it will probably go unnoticed. However, when a dumb idiot posts it on SD, that is like handing over the deal to a mob to get lynched. You can expect tens of thousands of people to call Amex begging to match codes. This, in turn, alerts Senior big shots at Amex, and they shut it down.
