Milo did it again! A week after tearing a hole in my wife’s new top, Milo was so excited to see my daughter, he ran over and jumped on her knocking her brand new sunglasses on the driveway. Then stepped on them which put a large scratch in the middles of the lenses.
The unfortunate part of this situation was the sunglasses were bought the previous day using my wife’s Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select Mastercard. My daughter only got to where them for a few hours before they were damaged.
Even though they were only $10, I wanted to see if Citi’s Purchase Protection plan would cover this loss as easily as American Express did last week.
Citi’s Purchase Assurance Coverage Benefit
After logging into the Citi website, I clicked on ‘Rewards & Benefit’ –>> ‘Card Benefits’ and scrolled down to the Shopping Benefits and clicked on the ‘Purchase Assurance Coverage’
The Purchase Assurance Coverage benefit covers most items from damage or being stolen within 90 days of purchase. Claims are also limited to $10,000 per item and $50,000 per account every 12 months.
Filing a Claim
You can call 1-800-627-8372 to start a claim, but I went to www.mycardbenefits.com instead. They asked you to be prepared with the following:
- repair estimate for damaged item(s)
- Photograph clearly showing damage
- Receipt showing purchase of covered item(s)
- Statement showing purchase of covered item(s)
- Report from police listing any items stolen
- Copy of the declarations page of any applicable insurance or protection
- Any other documentation that may be reasonably requested by us or our administrator to validate a claim.
I clicked on the ‘File A Claim Online’ button and started the process. The questions were basic and simple – date of purchase, date of incident, what happened, etc.
Unlike American Express at the end of the claim they ask you to upload documentation. I ended up uploading a photograph of the scratched sunglasses and a copy of the receipt.
After submitting the claim, I quickly got an email they my claim has been received along with the claim number.
The Response
The next day I received an email asking for 3 documents:
- The Billing statement supporting the purchase of the item
- Photos of item (clearly showing damage if present)
- Homeowners/Renters insurance declarations page showing insurance carrier name, phone number, policy number, deductible and policy coverage dates
So I sent them the same photo of the damaged sunglasses (photo at the top of this post) along with a copy of my homeowners insurance policy and since the statement didn’t close yet, I printed out the ‘current activity’ from the Citi website.
The Outcome
Four days after submitting the additional information, I was happy to see this email:
Unlike American Express, Mastercard took a little longer to process and asked for backup documentation for my claim even though it was less than $10. But I was obviously happy with the result.
Have you ever used this Mastercard benefit? How did it turn out?
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