What to do when you can no longer access your AMEX Membership Rewards account online

Introduction

I’m not sure exactly when this started to happen to me, but I think it was around the time that I had upgraded my AMEX Business Green card to Platinum cards.  This is what happens when I go to www.membershiprewards.com:

Notice how I’m logged in, but it says for me to call to enroll instead of displaying my MR balance.  First of all, this is my main account and all 3 master MR cards are attached to this login, so it’s not user error.  Plus it was working a few months ago.  This is the error I get when I try to click through from my main account:

What NOT to do

I called up that 1-800-297-3276 number on a Sunday while watching football.  The first line rep could recreate the issue on his end, but couldn’t resolve it and forwarded me to the IT team.  Once I got on the phone with them and after a few minutes, India sent me back to the MR team (I thought this was a diff group.)  The lady seemed to know what she was doing, but put me on hold to investigate.  After 5 minutes on hold, India picked up again.  Sure enough, India transferred me back to the MR team.  This lady then picks up and has no clue, asking me to try a different browser.  After a while with her, she sent me back to India.  I shit you not!  Then of course India sends me back to the MR team.  Next an older sounding gentleman picks up and I was at the 45 minute mark at this point, so I yelled at him, “THIS IS THE 7TH TIME I’VE BEEN TRANSFERRED!  PLEASE FIX MY ACCOUNT!”  To be fair, this was the only rep who actually asked me for the error code of LA01-101.  However after 15 minutes, I knew the call was going nowhere and so I just hung up.  Total call time – 1 hr 5 minutes!

The real fix

The fix for this is to simply remove all of your master MR cards.  Then create a new online account and add those cards to it.  The good news is that you don’t have to re-set up your bank and autopay information.