Messy: American Express 2025 Platinum Statement Credits rollout

American Express kicked off 2025 by announcing some highly unpopular changes to the AMEX Platinum Charge’s annual statement credits. From this year onwards, the local dining, overseas dining, lifestyle and airline credits will be issued on a half-yearly basis, adding further complexity to a card that already requires a good deal of micromanagement.

There’s a lot of unhappiness about this switch, and while I do intend to cover that in a separate post, what I want to talk about here is the messy and haphazard manner in which American Express is rolling out the credits.

Enrolment for 2025’s credits was supposed to open on 15 January 2025, but instead, it’s gone live more than a week ahead of schedule. That might sound like a good thing, but it’s actually causing a lot of confusion, and likely to result in a lot of (completely avoidable) customer dissatisfaction.

2025 Platinum Statement Credits now live (or are they?)

On 7 January 2025, the AMEX Offers portal was updated with 2025’s Platinum Statement Credits. Cardmembers can enrol their cards without any issues, but if you’re thinking about rushing out and spending those credits now, you might want to wait.

Why? Because according to American Express, the credits are for use from 15 January 2025 onwards.

Huh? Then why release them now? Well, per the CSOs:

“The period from 7th to 14th January is designated as a testing period to ensure the technology supporting the benefit functions as expected and is fully stabilised before official enrollment begins.”

I’m no tech whiz, but isn’t that the kind of thing you’re supposed to do in a closed environment, instead of releasing it into the wild? 

I mean, if cardholders see something listed in the AMEX Offers section, it’s not unreasonable for them to assume they can enrol and start using it right away. But no. According to the CSOs, the offer is live but not live, and if you spend right now, you won’t receive any statement credits.

Of course, we know better than to take what the CSOs say at face value. So I also reached out to AMEX for clarification, and was told that “officially”, you have to wait till 15 January 2025 to start spending.

Now, if this is true, then it’s very poor form indeed, because the offer terms make no mention of the start date. For example, here’s the T&Cs for the Local Dining credit.

The terms never specify that the benefit is restricted to use from 15 January 2025. They only state that you must save the benefit to your card before making a payment. And if cardholders have done that, it’s rather devious to turn around and say “Gotcha! You should have been checking the website!”

But that’s exactly what a cardmember was told, when he asked a CSO why the 15 January 2025 start date was not mentioned in the T&Cs.

I did a double take when I read this: 

“We believe our Platinum members keep checking the Experience app and the website to ensure no update is missed hence it was notified on the platform where all card members can view the same information.”

Um, no. I don’t know how to tell you this, but they really don’t. At best they’ll read the T&Cs, and if it’s not mentioned there, how do you expect them to know about the restriction?

What’s frustrating is how unnecessary this problem is. Would it have been that hard to insert a line in the T&Cs which clearly states that credits can’t be used before the 15th? Isn’t that better than dealing with a bunch of angry customers clogging up your chat lines, or having to manually process appeals after the fact?

Of course, I suppose you could read between the lines of AMEX’s response, in that even though “officially” you can only start spending from 15 January 2025, “unofficially” you can start from the time of enrolment and everything will be fine.

I guess those who pulled the trigger early will find out soon enough, and for what it’s worth, I personally plan to use the Overseas Dining credit in Bangkok on the 12th. The way I see it, if I’m right I’ll have settled the credit for H1 2025, and if I’m wrong, I’ll just incur some opportunity cost in terms of the miles I could have earned with a better card.

Messy, messy, messy

American Express is normally one of the better card issuers when it comes to customer service and user experience, but they’ve dropped the ball here in a big way. 

Leaving aside the can of worms they’ve opened by posting the offers ahead of schedule, there’s minor typos that can cause major headaches. For instance, the Airline credit’s headline specifies a minimum spend of S$300 in a single transaction, but the offer terms suggest the amount can be accumulated across multiple transactions.

I’ve clarified with AMEX that “single” is the correct version — which means another nerf compared to last year where the credits could be spent over multiple transactions — but how hard would it be to proofread these things?

The error has been corrected as of this morning, but there’s at least one person out there who relied on the T&Cs (and a CSO’s mistaken assurances) and made an airline spend of less than S$300. I certainly hope they do right by him, because whenever something conflicts with the T&Cs, the T&Cs should take precedence.

Another example of a glitch that shouldn’t have made its way into the wild can be found with the Local Dining credit. Tapping “See Nearby Locations” should bring up a list of eligible restaurants, but it mentions Basilico, which is not participating for 2025.

If a customer, relying on this information, were to go ahead and spend here (a reasonable assumption, as Basilico was a participating restaurant for the 2024 Local Dining credit), would AMEX still honour it? Errors like these feel self-inflicted, generating unnecessary work for both customers and AMEX.

Taking a step back, why is there even a blackout period from 1-14 January 2025? I understand that the rules governing the statement credits have changed, so there’s probably a need to update the backend systems, but 14 days? This seems like an issue that could have been flagged much earlier, especially for cardholders who planned post-New Year trips expecting to use their credits in early 2025.

Conclusion

AMEX Platinum Charge cardholders can now enrol for the 2025 Platinum Statement Credits, but should exercise caution with spending them ahead of 15 January 2025. Officially, you won’t get any rebates. Unofficially, well…who wants to test the waters?

American Express must surely have known that the switch to half-yearly credits would be widely loathed, so the least they could have done was make the changeover as smooth as possible. I’m willing to bet there’s a large number of cardholders who don’t use the AMEX Experiences app, who don’t read The MileLion, who simply see a new AMEX offer, enrol, and start spending. And if AMEX chooses to enforce the 15 January start date, this group is going to be frustrated (to put it mildly), especially since the offer terms fail to mention this restriction.

Not a great start to 2025, that’s for sure.