Updating Your Loyalty Program Number with American Express Can Be Tricky

One Mile at a Time recently posted about why you should always join a loyalty program before applying for a credit card. This is great advice. If everything goes smoothly, your new credit card and your loyalty program account will be linked from the get-go.

I recently applied for the American Express Hilton Honors Surpass. Even though I entered my Hilton Honors number on my application, I was given a new number. I called Amex and they made it sound like an easy fix. They deactivated my newly created number and put in a request to add my existing Hilton number.

A week went by and I kept seeing “Not Available” when I logged in. I called Amex again and they said they were waiting for Hilton to approve the request. A few days past so I chatted with Amex to see what was up. I received the same info and the representative told me to call Hilton to push along the request. I called Hilton and they had no clue what I was talking about.

I called American Express again and finally spoke to a competent representative. He could see the issue on his end and said the request was submitted but no one had actually activated my number yet. It appears they didn’t really need any approval from Hilton, just someone on Amex’s end to click the right button. He told me to wait 48 hours and it would be all set. Sure enough, when I logged in two days later, I was good to go.

Final Thoughts

I wasted about 1 hour of my time on phone calls trying to get my Hilton number updated on my new American Express card. I don’t know why I was issued a new Hilton number in the first place. It can be difficult to explain the situation correctly so that the customer service rep can help you effectively. Hopefully, this can help anyone else who runs into this issue resolve it more quickly.