Don't Lose Your Hard-Earned Credit Card Reward Points!

One of the main reasons consumers are attracted to credit cards is that they offer an opportunity to earn rewards. After all, who wouldn’t want to get back a portion of the money they spend on groceries each week, or a chance to get a free airline ticket to Paris?

Having said that, you should be aware that all the reward points or travel miles that you’ve meticulously and laboriously collected over a period of time could easily be lost in an instant. Given below are some of the reasons why cardholders sometimes lose their hard-earned reward points, and what they can do to avoid this.

1. Late payments: If you make late payments, or pay less than the minimum due amount, the card company could forfeit the reward points it had previosly indicated as earned. To avoid this situation, make sure you pay your bills on time by setting up automatic payments, or by requesting your issuer to send email/text reminders. 

2. Returning Purchases: When you return an item you had purchased with your credit card, you will likely lose the points that you had earned purchasing it. 

3. Closing Your Account: Depending on the card’s terms and conditions, you may lose previously earned points if you terminate your account or if the issuer closes it due to inactivity - unless the rewards program is operated by an airline, hotel chain or retailer, and the points are transferred each month to another company's account. Otherwise, make sure to keep your card active by using it at regular intervals, and redeem your points before you close your account. 

4. Letting Rewards Expire: Some issuers offer reward points that have to be redeemed within a certain time period. To ensure that they don’t expire, keep track of all the points you earn on various cards, and redeem them at regular intervals. 

5. Going Against the Rules: Every card company has its own set of terms and conditions, and if you break these rules, you may end up losing your points. For example, most airlines prohibit buying or selling of travel miles or award tickets. So the card company can not only cancel the buyer’s ticket, but it can also close down the seller’s account and forfeit all his or her loyalty points. 

6. Purchasing through Near Field Communications (NFC) or Digital Wallets: Certain issuers offer rewards on certain categories of purchases. When you buy something using NFC technology or digital wallets, because of the merchant code used, the card company may not be able to identify what exactly was purchased. Thus, they may not award you your due reward points. Luckily, this is not the case with Apple Pay, or other technologies that use tokenization to secure card transactions. 

7. Death: Some card companies specify in their agreement that they have the right to close the customer’s account in the event of his or her death. This prevents the points from being transferred to others. While it’s not possible to prevent death, it is at least advisable to not hoard points, and redeem them at regular intervals.

Getting freebies through credit card reward points can be quite gratifying. But what if I told you that it’s possible to get a free loan via credit card financing? As unbelievable as it may sound, you can obtain as much as $50,000 - $250,000 of unsecured credit at 0% interest through this route. At Fund&Grow, we not only tell our clients what these requirements are, but also help them to acquire the funding by taking care of most of the paperwork. Thus, if you need a loan, or know someone who does, call us at (800) 996-0270 and we’ll take care of the rest.