How you can lose your credit card rewards

Rewards represent a primary weapon in a credit card company's arsenal when it comes to getting -- and keeping -- you as a customer. Whether they're promising points, miles or cash back, rewards ensure the credit card companies that you'll keep pulling out the plastic.

But sometimes it seems the issuers don't really want to give you those rewards you've spent so much to earn. A veritable laundry list of ways your card company can chip away at the value of your rewards -- or even take them away -- lies tucked into the fine print of your card's terms and conditions. During research for this story, WalletPop heard from a disheartening number of readers who said they'd been denied their rewards.

When Rich Stambolian, a writer, photographer and graphic designer in New York, decided to close his six-year-old Sears card last year, he was owed roughly $140 in rewards. He asked what would happen to them and was told gift cards in that amount would be mailed to him. A year and numerous frustrating phone calls later, Stambolian says he has nothing to show for it. "They were like, 'We don't have any way to track them,'" he told WalletPop He countered that he'd been a loyal customer for years, to no avail.