I recently learned of the US Bank Cash+ and the Max Cash Preferred (MCP) offered by some local banks, and the 5% cashback on utilities you can get on them.
My house has oil heating and when they deliver it's always $500 or more. Plus when they do service or maintenance, more hundreds. Until now I used an Amex to pay. Oil companies aren't quite the same as your typical water, electric, or gas utils though so I checked my past payments to see if it'll qualify for 5% on MCP.
Amex categorized it as "Other – Utilities" so I figured the MCP would get it as 5% and opened it. I did a test payment of $2 to my oil company and it was categorized as "FUEL DEALERS-COAL/FUEL OIL/LIQUEFIED PETROLEUM/WOOD" and only got 1%.
I also did a payment to the electric company which was categorized correctly and got 5%. But the name of the category is "UTILITIES-ELEC/GAS/HEATING OIL/SANITARY/WATER" … So heating oil should be part of the utilities category!
Is there anything I can do to get my oil to earn the 5% cashback?
Heating oil categorized as utilities for AmEx but not MCP
byu/jammastajew inCreditCards
Posted by jammastajew
1 Comment
There is likely nothing you can do. Card bonus categories work by recognizing specific MCCs, so it seems your oil company has an MCC that doesn’t match the ones accepted by US Bank for its bonus categories. Different issuers group MCCs in different ways, so it’s not unusual to see Amex and US Bank, for instance, categorize the same merchant differently.