Thread: Earning Membership Rewards points for online shopping (and offline?)

Not the best title, sorry, but I can't think how else to put it.

I'm still a bit new to amex, and I'm just wondering a couple things. On their site, they have a whole section of partners who you can earn bonus points from shopping with. Such as their current promotion at like, Bloomingdales online, where you get 5x points. However, they have you log in to a little window and then have the amex website re-direct you to the Bloomingdales site.

With that premised, how exactly are they tracking this? Are they placing cookies on our systems that lets them know we came from the amex site? Or, is it just because we shopped through their partner (and see that charge on our cards)?

I guess what I really don't understand is would I only get the bonus points if I bought it online through their portal, or could I shop normally online/in-store and get the same promotion?

Please and thank you~

you get more points shopping through them. it works like this for any business, Discover the same.

I have always wondered that. Its the same for Citi bank thank you website. How do they know we shopped through the thank you website?

While you don't see it (background) the link you are clicking on to complete the transaction / online purchase is generated with a referral or merchant code, similar to what you get when you refer a member to dish network, bank account or when you apply for a credit card using the links from this forum. The main difference is this is all computer generated and tracked, so you don't need to enter a referral number.
The second way is a merchant name match