An (Almost) Failed Experiment

I'm getting ready to close our Barclaycard Arrival Plus before our annual fee becomes due at the end of this month. I had 51,000 miles (or about $50) that needed to be used, and I was not about to let those go to waste!

I had the idea to see if I could buy points/miles to bulk up some of our accounts since we don't have an immediate trip coming up.

My first thought was to buy IHG points since we use those on a regular basis. However, once I clicked on the "buy points" link, I was redirected to points.com and I was almost sure that wouldn't count as travel.

Since we opened our Alaska Airlines credit cards, I decided to see if I could find buy a gift certificate there. Sure enough, I could! And the website didn't direct me elsewhere! I thought I was golden.

I purchased a $50 gift card and saw it come through on my Barclaycard as this:

Uh-oh.

The merchant category was seemingly nothing to do with travel. I waited a few days, but no available redemptions showed up in my points portal.

I called Barclaycard customer service and was told that this is a fairly common error, but they have no control over how merchants choose to categorize themselves. So if I were to purchase a flight on Alaska Airlines, it would count. A gift certificate, however, was a no-go.

Grrrr.

I ended up filing a claim to have it reviewed and through a long process of waiting and many phone calls, was finally able to get a one-time exception approved.

So, the moral of the story is--I should have discovered this article before embarking upon my experiment.

Live and learn and don't be like Jessa.

#basics