A few weeks ago, I posted about the launch of the new BankAmeriDeals program. I was interested in the change because I never loved the old program and the new program initially appeared to provide access to more and new/different opportunities to earn.
Since the launch, I’ve struggled with the poor user interface. A helpful improvement would be having all the eligible rewards show up on the same page for activation and easy tracking of available deals. I’ve also had the unfortunate experience of earned awards not posting that should have and needing to call customer service (twice!) about it, which is a tremendous waste of time.
Today, I had a new experience. When logging into BankAmeriDeals I noticed a slew of new “Daily Essential” opportunities with an activate button. Upon activating, I was surprised to see that they are on a timer and expire after 4 hours! No place on the site or in any other communication that I have received from Bank of America were expiring deals discussed.
So, it appears that there are several categories of awards in BankAmeriDeals. Those that are part of the program that you simply earn without any activation, those that you must activate and are time-limited but do not expire for some unknown length of time, and those that are hyper location specific and short-term (think grocery stores, gas stations, fast food restaurants) that you must activate immediately before use and expire after 4 hours.
I’m not thrilled with the layers of complexity of this new program, especially given my recent experience of having to call twice to get credit for earned rewards. Really hoping that the website developers and program managers are gathering user feedback and will make some improvements soon.
How is your experience with the new BankAmeriDeals program? Has anyone seen a play book, terms and conditions, or a post with the rules of the road for how this program is supposed to operate?
This is the only on-line resource I’ve found and it’s not particularly detailed: https://promotions.bankofamerica.com/en/deals
Another quirk of the Bank of America BankAmeriDeals program
byu/Consumer_Ombudsman inCreditCards
Posted by Consumer_Ombudsman
3 Comments
But the four hour timer and usage of physical card is in the description..?
Sorry might just be a you thing.
I found it’s not worth the hassle. Most of the stores I purchase from have similar deals on other credit card sites that are easier to navigate, clip/activate, and use. I’ve also found that the cashback deals aren’t all that great; many are less than 2%, where USBank, WF, Chase, Amex often have 5-15% coupons.
For all those reasons, but mostly the fact that its not transparent to use, I’ve pretty much given up on it.
The gas ones I saw said “Powered by Upside” which is a bit of a Rakuten-esque coupon app that indeed requires activation. So that might be the reason for it. Just like a lot of the airlines dining rewards are a skin of the Rewards Network, it’s possible BoA is just letting Upside run their own coupons.