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Southwest Incidental Fees Not Reflected Property With American Express Platinum Credit Benefit

reunited1
Explorer C

The following has been copied and pasted from the Amex website with a description of this benefit.

 

Select one qualifying airline and then receive up to $200 per calendar year in statement credits when incidental fees, such as checked bags and flight-change fees, are charged by the airline to your Business Platinum Card® account.‡
Good to Know:

  1. This benefit doesn't offer credit toward airline tickets, mileage points purchases or mileage points transfer fees, gift cards, upgrades, duty–free purchases, or award tickets.
  2. Eligible purchases made by both the Basic and any Additional Card Members are covered. However, statement credits for eligible purchases can't exceed $200 on the Card account per calendar year.

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Here's the issue:
The manner in which Southwest bills for incidental, qualifying charges, is not in sync with Amex's procedure for automatically applying such charges to the $200 airline credit benefit.
 
For example, the $15 Early Bird Checkin fee can be submitted to Amex under any of a number of DBAs for Southwest Airlines. The following are examples taken directly from my Amex billing statement:
DTCOM - Dallas, TX
SW Air - Dallas TX
ERRHD - Dallas, TX
MOBLE - Dallas, TX
 
Additionally, charges for the $40 boarding position upgrade paid at the gate prior to departure will appear on an Amex statement as the airport code where the fee was paid, for example:
FLL - Dallas, TX
MCO - Dallas, TX
 
The Amex program allows for reimbursement under this benefit for charges related to seating fees. Since Southwest has a seating scheme different than any other airline, the $15 Early Bird and $40 gate upgrade should be considered as seating charges by Amex (in my opinion).
 
I am posting this message to see if there are other Southwest patrons who have experienced this same issue. Further, I am hoping that someone from Southwest will see this post and possibly consider revising the description of charges that get submitted to Amex to include the company name "Southwest Airlines" in the description to better set off these incidental charges. This would actually be a value-add for all passengers who need to easily identify such charges for expense and other reporting.
 
 
Thanks so much for providing this forum for presenting this issue. It is my hope that it ultimately results in a change by Southwest so I can avoid spending the amount of time I expended today unsuccessfully resolving the matter with Amex. 
1 REPLY 1

Re: Southwest Incidental Fees Not Reflected Property With American Express Platinum Credit Benefit

mlarose
Explorer C

I've experienced the same challenge with Southwest ancillary expenses showing up on monthly AMEX statements under Southwest's OBE's (Other Business Enterprises).  It was actually a great help having you list out the OBE that they operate under and the type of charges they correspond with.  

 

One note that may play a part in this scenario, I utilize Concur for our companies AMEX expense reporting.  It's a possibility it occurs somewhere between the AMEX to Concur transfer of statement data.  I rarely reference my AMEX statements directly so I'll have to double check to see if they originate on those statements as well, but referencing your post I'm sure it probably shows the same on mine if it's occuring on yours as well.  

 

Sorry no solution for you, other than just wanted to Thank You for taking the time to outline the ancillary charges and their DBA name.....you saved me a good chunk of time having to google search each one 🙂 

 

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