Rapid Travel Chai

My battle for the US Bank Club Carlson Visa anniversary certs continues.

I earlier wrote Has Anyone Received Their US Bank Club Carlson $10k Spend Annual Certs and a few had. We are the guinea pigs, those who got the card immediately upon launch and so had our anniversary under the new card terms fall in late 2015.

To recap, since people at US Bank and Club Carlson are not entirely familiar, these are not the global certs for complaining about the credit card benefit changes. These are a new benefit of a US cert for $10k annual spend.

I wound my way through various channels of contact to US Bank and Club Carlson, each was adamant I should contact the other. An example:

What I found in this process is that Club Carlson is unable and unwilling to do anything, while the only people at US Bank willing to do anything are in the President’s Office, to which complaints eventually get escalated.

I received a call from a President’s Office representative who informed me that I had not met the spend requirement on either card. I asked her to actually total my charges, and she agreed to call me back in 20 minutes. She did, and confirmed that, yes, I had made the required spend, and that the system total was in error showing me several thousand short.

She did confirm that all charges from annual fee charge date to annual fee charge date qualify. Not statement date. Not calendar year. She had on record that I had confirmed this with a supervisor last year, so at least they have decent recordkeeping.

We thought maybe the missing charges were December 2015 between annual fee and year-end. Maybe they did not program for 2015.

She got in touch with the department that runs the numbers and the answer turned out to be the macro rejecting multiple same-day transactions at ‘a certain retailer.’ It seems the macro only picked up one transaction per retailer per day. They are working on a fix.

Now I am due to get the certs, however the wrinkle is they supposedly cannot manually push them so they will go in the next batch, which like other US Bank bonuses will be the statement after the next statement. Since I do not have an immediate need for the certs, this will give me a farther out expiration date, so I did not complain further.

There you have it. If you are missing the certs, do this:

1. Check for multiple same-day same-retailer transactions as the possible culprit.
2. Call US Bank and ask for immediate escalation to the Presidents Office. If not, at least get a supervisor.
3. Persist!