Expenses are surely piling up for Discover after a few unbelievable offers this year. Now it looks like they will be enforcing all their fine print and try to pay out as little as possible, which makes sense. After sending out letters for Non-Discover Card Purchases, now they are contacting customers regarding gift card purchases with Apple Pay.
Many people have received emails regarding their gift card purchases and some report even being contacted for purchases which didn’t include gift cards. It seems like Discover is not actually checking the purchases for gift cards, but is sending emails to people who have made large purchases or purchases with totals that would most likely result from gift card purchases such as $504.95 or $1009.90.
This is the text of the email
We’re writing to let you know that your Apple Pay purchase on September 19, 2015 for $x,xxx.xx at Walgreens #xxxx included a gift card. The gift card portion of your purchase does not qualify for the 10% Cashback Bonus® promotion.
As a reminder, now through December 31, 2015, you’ll earn an extra 10% Cashback Bonus® on up to $10,000 in purchases when you shop in stores and use your Discover card with Apple Pay, excluding gift card purchases.
If you disagree with our finding and contend that your purchase did not include a gift card or a portion of your purchase qualifies per the terms of the promotion, let us know with supporting documentation in the next 21 days. Documentation can include store receipts or invoices, but cannot include your Discover card statement. You can send documentation via email.
So they are giving people the option to prove that they didn’t purchase gift cards. While this is understandable for those who did purchase gift cards, it will be a headache for people with non-gift card purchases who will have to provide receipts in order to receive their cash back. This will certainly not go over well with many customers.
Discover is offering a “one-time courtesy” for transactions on 9/16 and 9/17 which included gift cards. This is not really a courteous move, but they will have to pay cash back on that amount since the gift card exclusion language was introduced on September 18th.
Let us know if you received such emails and if your purchases included gift cards.
