Question
Back in July I received an offer from First Bank that I would get double miles on all "Dining, Groceries, Gas, Utilities, Dry Cleaning, Wireless Services, Drug Stores, Home Improvement, Movies/Refreshments and Video Rentals" over a certain dollar amount.
Well, I just received my statement and the "double" miles were significantly less than what I calculated. After a couple of e-mails I finally received the following statement:
"There are specific merchant codes used to determine what qualifies for the bonus miles. These codes are assigned to the merchant by their depositing bank. Since these codes cannot be changed it is possible that multi-service merchants may not be included in the promotion. Example: A Merchant who is coded by their bank as a bookstore merchant may also rent movies, but will not be included in the promotion.
We have no control over the assigned codes the depositing banks issue, therefore we are unable to determine which sales will fall under the above categories. "
I have a hard time understanding how First Bank can make an offer yet they have no way of validating if the "rewards" are accurate. I even gave them a list of merchants that I believe should have been included in the double miles offer but they seemed to ignore the information. One merchant that seemed to missing from the list was Bristol Farms which is a full service grocery store. This is not a case of a "bookstore merchant ... also rent movies" type of situation. In the future, I will make sure to take any of their special offers with a grain of salt - because that is about all that they are worth.
Answer
I noticed this as well. I have pretty much given up hope on their category-specific promotions. No more for me.... :td: