I will try to summarize a very disturbing action that was taken by American Express with my AMEX credit cards.
For the past 23 years, My wife and I have had AMEX credit cards. In particular, My wife and I had a Platinum card and a "Blue" card. A few years ago, I applied for an AMEX business card to be used by myself and my administrator for business expenses. Everything went fine.
In late April, on a weeked, my platinum card was denied at a local restaurant. This had occasionally happened in the past and it was always due to a potential security break and AMEX would contact me to check on a questionable charge. This is obviously a good thing and I was always impressed.
This time I never received a call so on Monday morning, May 4, I called the AMEX Platinum number and was told that my Platinum card had been cancelled. Not only had my and my wife’s Platinum card been cancelled, but they also cancelled our Blue cards and my business card!
It took the better part of the week and a total of 8 hours and three days on the phone to find someone who could tell me why they cancelled all of my cards. It turns out that my company business has its own merchant account and during the previous week, my secretary had reason to believe that there was a problem with our merchant account and used my business card to do a test of the system. Apparently, using my business card on our merchant account was in violation of AMEX policies and they automatically cancelled all of my cards. I was told that I should have known this since it is part of the 10 page, number 2 font, terms of agreement that I received with the issueing of the card.
I never received any call or notification from them that this was going to happen or that it already happened! They told me on the phone that a first class letter was mailed to me informing me of the situation. To this day I have not received any formal, written notification.
I proceeded to request that my annual Platinum fee be returned since I paid that in March leaving me with less than a month of account use. Platinum card fees are $425 for my card and approximately $200 for my wife's.
As of June 18th, I have not received even a prorated refund, and trying to communicate with AMEX results in me wasting my time for at least 2 hours with every call. I mentioned to an account representative from North Carolina that every communication I have with AMEX seems to disappear into a great big black hole. He assured me that he would personally take care of the matter and call me back before the end of the day. He has never called back and it has now been almost 2 weeks. I asked him for a telephone number to contact him and he graciously gave me his “direct” line. That number turns out to be their direct line to their “big black hole”. It is answered by a machine!
Four weeks ago I wrote a letter to a VP who's name I was given, to explain the situation.
I have yet to hear from her or even receive an acknowledgement!
I would really appreciate your help in this matter. I don't know who else to turn to.
It is extremely frustrating.
By the way in case you are wondering, they have confirmed that my credit history has been fine and has nothing to do with this whole bizarre episode.
Thank you,
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