New Amtrak Guest Rewards Master Card - Fall 2015

[TraneMan]

Anyone else use text alerts on their new BoA card? I have all my Chase cards setup to text me anytime a charge happens. Works great. So far with BoA, it does not text me until the transaction moves from Pending to a final charge. I am hating that and wondering if it is by design or an error.

I was looking for that too, I can't find it.. :-( Just email.

 

[NW cannonball]

Possible BOA has problems overall just now? I got a replacement card (not amtrak-related) yesterday but BOA online register-new-card-site has no clue.

Suggest wait a day or three -- the techies will figure it out

 

[TinCan782]

Anyone else use text alerts on their new BoA card? I have all my Chase cards setup to text me anytime a charge happens. Works great. So far with BoA, it does not text me until the transaction moves from Pending to a final charge. I am hating that and wondering if it is by design or an error.

I was looking for that too, I can't find it.. :-( Just email.

I couldn't find the text alerts on the mobile app...had to log in to the regular website to enable text alerts.

 

[printman2000]

I called and talked to someone on Monday and they said to give it a couple of days. Now a week later and still not working. Only getting alerts WAY after the fact. Guess I will have to call. Was just wondering if it was just me or if that is the way they do it.

 

[DoB]

The "calendar year" for earning Tier Qualifying Points begin with the activation date.

Meaning that the "calendar year" actually runs from anniversary date to anniversary date, or does it reset every year on January 1 despite 2015 being a short year for the program?

 

[jis]

Tier qualification is something that AGR does, and not the credit card issuing bank. BOA will just report the TQPs earned as and when they are earned, to AGR. BOA of course has no way of knowing what TQP is earned by Amtrak travel. BOA's TQP accumulation beging with the registration date with BOA most likely, given the way they seem to operate. For AGR the TQP accumulation datet usually runs from the first day of calendar year or the AGR registration date if that is later than the first day of the calendar year.to the last day of a calendar year.

 

[DoB]

Tier qualification is something that AGR does, and not the credit card issuing bank. BOA will just report the TQPs earned as and when they are earned, to AGR. BOA of course has no way of knowing what TQP is earned by Amtrak travel. BOA's TQP accumulation beging with the registration date with BOA most likely, given the way they seem to operate. For AGR the TQP accumulation datet usually runs from the first day of calendar year or the AGR registration date if that is later than the first day of the calendar year.to the last day of a calendar year.

Sorry, I probably snipped too much from the quotation. I know how AGR tier qualification does. My question is whether the year for the BoA TQP benefit runs from January 1 to December 31 (which means there's a bit of a rush to charge $20k by the end of the year for those who want to maximize the benefit) or from anniversary date to anniversary date (which opens up interesting tier qualification options).

 

[diesteldorf]

Tier qualification is something that AGR does, and not the credit card issuing bank. BOA will just report the TQPs earned as and when they are earned, to AGR. BOA of course has no way of knowing what TQP is earned by Amtrak travel. BOA's TQP accumulation beging with the registration date with BOA most likely, given the way they seem to operate. For AGR the TQP accumulation datet usually runs from the first day of calendar year or the AGR registration date if that is later than the first day of the calendar year.to the last day of a calendar year.

Sorry, I probably snipped too much from the quotation. I know how AGR tier qualification does. My question is whether the year for the BoA TQP benefit runs from January 1 to December 31 (which means there's a bit of a rush to charge $20k by the end of the year for those who want to maximize the benefit) or from anniversary date to anniversary date (which opens up interesting tier qualification options).

I took this directly from the Amtrak website when I clicked to look at the benefits of the World Card:

http://www.amtrak.com/earn-free-travel-amtrak-guest-rewards-credit-cards

Earn 1,000 Tier Qualifying Points (TQPs) toward earning status each time your eligible spending reaches $5,000 in a calendar year, up to 4,000 TQPs per year.

It refers to "calendar year" and AGR status is also earned based on calendar year from January 1st to December 31. Even purchasing AGR points was based on calendar year as well, with people able to buy points in December and then in January.

If you charge $20,000 between now and December 31st, you should have 4000 TQP for 2015. In January, you could charge another $20,000 and have 4000 points for 2016.

What isn't exactly clear is what would happen if you had $3800 worth of charges as of December 31st. Would you need to just charge $1200 in January to earn 1000 TQPs for 2016, or $5000 in new charges?

 

[me_little_me]

I called and talked to someone on Monday and they said to give it a couple of days. Now a week later and still not working. Only getting alerts WAY after the fact. Guess I will have to call. Was just wondering if it was just me or if that is the way they do it.

They like sending my alerts in the middle of the night.

 

[printman2000]

The alert for online/phone charges happens as soon as a charge is done. The other one seems to wait till it moves from pending to a charge. I miss Chase.

 

[Slayer Essence]

Has anyone received their Club Acela pass in the mail?

 

[TinCan782]

Got my first BofA CC statement today AND, the first batch of points posted to AGR from BofA World Card

 

[yarrow]

Got my first BofA CC statement today AND, the first batch of points posted to AGR from BofA World Card

got mine also plus the 20k bonus as we put the $1000 on the card. happy with b of a so far

 

[Eris]

Double points for our weekend hotel stay (plus single points for everything else) posted. Didn't quite hit $1000, so will have to wait until next month.

 

[City of Miami]

My card was waiting for me when I returned from my SAS-CVS trip. The accompanying literature says there are 'certain' exclusions for purchases that provide bonus points, particularly for the 12K bonus. These exclusions include paypal purchases [yikes!!!!] and any 'merchant' that does not have a suitable code. This is creepy news.....there was never any such problem with Chase. If Medicare doesn't have an acceptable code for premium payment I likely will not make the minimum spend in 90 days. Sucks.

 

[jis]

Yup. I just got credited the 20k bonus as I managed to squeak in the $1000 just a day before the billing date.

 

[Bigval109]

I recently received my new boa credit card. I paid the $79 for the card with the 20,000 bonus points plus I used it to pay for my LD Amtrak trip with came to a bit over$1000 . So if my math is correct I should windup with a total of 23,000 + points .

 

[Bob Dylan]

The $79 Fee doesn't count as spend or IINM qualify for AGR Points!??

 

[Ontherighttrack]

Hello. The BOA card has been nightmare for me so far. I have a question that no one at BOA has been able to help me with (spent over 2 hours on the phone). With the Chase Amtrak card, it was super easy to go online with Chase and set it up to automatically pay my credit balance each month from my checking account. I pay my bill in full each month, and it was so nice to never worry about missing a payment. It was all done automatically.

I've tried unsuccessfully to explain this feature to BOA. It's as if they've never heard of such a concept. I was finally told that I have to wait for a "bill" to generate in their bill pay system and then I have to login each month and manually tell their system to pay the bill on a certain date. This means I have to worry about remembering to go in and initiate that bill pay each month which is not the worry-free system I loved about Chase.

Has anyone found away to set up automatic payments of BOA balances without having to login each month and initiate it manually?

 

[Nomad]

I called BofA yesterday and had no problem setting up my auto pay from my checking account, which is with Chase. It is set to automatically pay the total amount due on the due date. It took maybe 5 minutes to follow the online prompts with the customer service rep on the line.

 

[Ontherighttrack]

I called BofA yesterday and had no problem setting up my auto pay from my checking account, which is with Chase. It is set to automatically pay the total amount due on the due date. It took maybe 5 minutes to follow the online prompts with the customer service rep on the line.

And you don't have to do that each month for each bill? That is what they have told me.

 

[Bob Dylan]

You got a bad agent! As we say about Amtrak and AGR, call BOA back and you should be able to handle this in a few minutes, No problema!

 

[Ontherighttrack]

You got a bad agent! As we say about Amtrak and AGR, call BOA back and you should be able to handle this in a few minutes, No problema!

Yes, I've had several bad agents! Well, you all gave me the courage to call them again. The 2nd agent I was transferred to understood what I was trying to do and I found the place to set it up! In case anyone else has this problem: you go to the Bill Pay Tab and choose Automatic/Recurring Payments. Then you click on the weirdly named "e-Bill Initiated". Don't click on "Recurring Payment". That's where the other reps were taking me and explaining how what I wanted to do was impossible.

"e-Bill Initiated" takes you to a page where you can choose to pay minimum payment, balance, amount due, or statement balance.

Thanks to all who replied to help me. Maybe things will get better from here on.

 

[willem]

I wonder if this feature is difficult to find, and the customer service representatives untrained on it, because using it prevents late payments and thus prevents a chance to enhance the bottom line.

 

[pennyk]

Has anyone received their points from their second BoA statement? My statement closes on the 7th of the month. I received the proper amount of points on October 8th for the statement closing October 7th, however, I have yet to receive my points from my November 7th statement. I phoned BoA customer service and they transferred me to their "redemption" department. It turns out that they transferred me to Amtrak Guest Rewards. Of course AGR could not help me with my problem, but suggested to wait a couple more days and phone BoA back if the points have not posted, which I will do.