AT&T rewards that aren't rewarding, part 2

As promised, the most fun AT&T rewards adventure deserves its own story.  For other fun experiences leading up to this, see the earlier post.

The mystery of the expiration date

One of the cards had the expiration date of 12/2022.  Fast-forward to the end of the year - Christmas, New Years, the whole thing.  Admittedly, I was somewhat negligent in letting a balance linger on the card up to the very end.  But then on Dec 31st I remembered that I had some money burning my pocket.  Still time left, right?  This is where things got interesting.  I tried multiple different sites - Paypal, Amazon, Walmart - and in each case I was summarily rejected, informed that the expiration date was no good.  For a moment there, my semi-intoxicated New Year's Eve mind briefly wondered whether I was a victim of computer servers which were 3 hours ahead, and therefore thought we'd entered 2023.  But then I remembered: I was on the East Coast, and most servers were on the West Coast, meaning 3 hours behind and still with plenty of time before New Year's.  So, time zone was not the issue here.

Paypal:

Walmart:

And Amazon:

At this point, the AT&T Reward Center was on my speed dial.  After some investigation, the verdict was in - to paraphrase a classic song , this time there ain't no love in the heart of AT&T Reward Center.  To date, my experience with them had been fantastic...  yet the frequency of my calls with them suggested there was something operationally wrong with the program.  Nothing against the fine people at the Center, but I had better things to do than calling them on the regular, and I suspect the cost of customer calls were adding up for them as well.

Another call to the Center

The customer associate, K., answered after a short wait.  I explained my predicament.  From what she was seeing, the card was still active.  Hmm, does it mean I can still use it - perhaps, in a physical store vs. online?  She promised to confirm - which I appreciated: I prefer to hear "I don't know" or "I am not sure", rather than getting  completely wrong information...  K., God bless her commitment to customer service, did some investigating.  When she returned, however, the news was very different and disappointing - turns out, the card was now expired and could no longer be used.

I still felt I had a decent case, but started bracing myself for a letdown.  So, given that my attempts to use the card prior to expiration were unsuccessful, can I get a replacement card for the balance?  K. apologized and transferred me to her supervisor, C.  C. was also entirely professional and pleasant - and I gotta say, I heart that team, they really know how to treat their customers. Very soon, however, C. dropped a bombshell - she explained that the card actually expired the morning of the last day of the month... meaning, my card turned into a pumpkin at 12:01am the morning of December 31st - not at the end of the day, as I had expected.

A new, creative take on expiration dates

Call me crazy, but that wasn't what I expected. 12 means end of the month. A quick online search confirmed that credit and debit cards expire at the end of the day of the last day of the month, not the beginning. This AT&T policy seemed arbitrary, counter to common practices and expectations, and ultimately misleading. C. agreed that it was odd, but admitted that there was nothing she could do. To add insult to injury, she also explained that there was a "no re-issue" policy, meaning they could not issue a new card even though I had a remaining balance.

Finally, I figured that given this is such a potentially sensitive matter, the Reward Center would be buttoned up, and at a minimum would include this policy in their user agreement or terms of use. I found the Cardholder Agreement, very helpfully linked in the footer of the website. Surely, the policy is in there! I downloaded the PDF document and searched for "expir", fully expecting to see some bulletproof legal language. To my genuine surprise, however, it wasn't there. Furthermore, the document referred to the "Valid thru" label for the expiration date, stamped right on the card - "thru" meaning through the end of the period, not until.


and:

Product manager's thoughts & More awesome

The card expiration date issue, in my opinion, was a major fuckup. Even if the underlying reason for the premature expiration were a technical limitation of their system (total guess), it was still a major breach of customer trust. As a general rule of thumb, anything to do with money must be handled carefully and thoughtfully. In the unlikely event that you absolutely cannot offer your customers the right solution, make sure to set the right and clear expectations. The expiration date was right there on the card. Things expire at the end of the expiration period, not before. Period. Full stop. The service's terms of use confirm the same - the magic operative word being "thru", which is the equivalent of "inclusive" - as in including the expiration date - vs. "exclusive". I don't think it can be interpreted any other way, including "let's just expire the cards the day before the end of the month".

My hunch is I am not the only who has experienced this issue. How many people like that are there? Could be a few, or could be many. I bet some will blow past the expiration date and will never discover this odd behavior. Others may encounter it, but won't take any action, for various reasons - inertia, time constraints, etc. Even those that do reach out to the Reward Center to report the problem and look for a solution, like me, may end up doing nothing. A very small minority, if any, will press the issue. The low yield is understandable because the upside is small, and the costs (time, energy) are typically greater. And that's how and why many organizations get away with murder.

I am not a litigious person, nor am I a fan of the pervasive litigious culture in the US. At the same time, there are plenty of cases when lawsuits are the only legal tool to call attention to a problem and, ideally, effect a positive change. Sometimes, when individual stakes are low and victims are not incentivized to press on, a class action lawsuit may be the right way to go - to enable people combat negligence or fraud at scale.