What a Diwali Dhamaka Diwala from AmEx this year!
I’m an American Express cardholder since 2002. For the longest time, I used to regard their systems, practices, and customer support (along with Citibank) as the gold standard among all credit card issuers in India.
Over the past few years, their customer support hasn’t always been the best (for me). While their recent actions regarding the Platinum Travel Credit Card or the Reward Multiplier have also taken some of the sheen off the gloss, the brand has remained largely trustworthy.
All this changed on Monday, November 09, 2026.
In an email, they said rewards points on a cancelled card must be redeemed within 30 days of cancellation. If not done, these points are forfeited. Due to a “technical issue”, they didn’t do it when I closed one of my AmEx cards in December 2024. However, the issue was “resolved” now, and they had updated my points balance. No further action was needed from me.
Whoa! This was a bolt from the blue.
I logged in to my AmEx account right away. Sure enough, they had “adjusted” a significant number of points from the balance. Meanwhile, on various social platforms, there was a storm brewing. This had impacted AmEx cardholders severely. Some had lost several lakh points and many even had a *negative point balance* after this clawback. Quite ridiculous.
Calling the Amex customer care number was pointless. For the first time ever, I wasn’t able to get through at all. Calls from thousands of irate cardholders probably jammed all their lines.
The executive I spoke with the next day was patient, understanding and aware of the issue. She herself held an American Express card and was also concerned about this sudden clawback of points. Basically, I just highlighted a couple of points:
a) Their membership summary page always showed an overall and identical points balance for both cards in the pool. While cancelling a card, figuring out which/how many points to redeem within 30 days of card closure was impossible.
b) At the time of closing the card, they said all points would remain on the other card. The executive also mentioned that the redemption/forfeiture within 30 days rule applied to account closure, not a single card closure, so no need to worry.
All credit card issuers have their terms and conditions. All cardholders must read, understand, and comply with them. Fair enough.
However, if there was a misinterpretation of their terms, even by their own employees, that’s a cause for concern, like account closure v/s card closure in this case.
Doing all this backend exercise to identify such points on a card cancelled in December 2024, clawing them back and then informing me, was in poor faith and a breach of decades-long trust.
They should have sent out an email highlighting the issue, mentioned the number of points accrued on the cancelled card, and provided a 30 day period from the date of that email to redeem (or forfeit) those points.
She said she’d convey my feedback and that the management was already working on how best to remedy the situation.
Fingers (and toes) crossed that they do a course correction on this, and soon.
Update: November 10, 2026: American Express has sent an email saying that after careful consideration of card members’ feedback, they have decided to restore the rewards points balance as on November 08, 2026. The restored points will be credited to the card account within 48-72 hours.
From November 15, 2026, they anyway planned to implement their new system with card-wise point balances, along with some other changes, so lets see how that pans out.
Whether they expected such a backlash from the affected cardholders community or not and reacted accordingly is a moot point. It’s good that better sense prevailed and they reversed their decision.
Restoring the clawed back points may be easy. Restoring that same level of trust in the brand?
Nope.
