An AmEx member no more

July 5, 2011 by Jeff Jarvis
,

I was a “member” of American Express for 35 years. No more. And Amex doesn’t give a shit. So fine. We’re well rid of each other.

Tonight I had a fraud call, finding false charges made on my account in Brazil. It’s a great thing that they caught this. Amex took care of it. The person I talked to couldn’t send me a new card. That was the first of many unempowered employees I spoke with.

I stopped using my Amex cards, apart from automated billings, months ago. The first problem was that it no longer gave me Continental miles. OK; I don’t know whose fault that is. The next problem was that they started tacking on fees for foreign exchange (in addition to the markup the get on the currency conversion). That’s bullshit. For years, they taught us that the best way to deal with foreign exchange was to use the card. No more.

I’ve charged a fortune of personal and business exchanges on Amex over the years. Suddenly, I stopped. If they had customer-service data mining worth a damn, they’d have found that and contacted me to see what was wrong. No. Tonight, I told them what was wrong.

I thought they’d try to retain me as a customer. The first person only tried to sell me a platinum card for $400 a year. Oh, yes, I’m unhappy, and now I’m going to spend *more* with Amex. Is that what you have to say to me? Well, the woman said, she was not authorized to do any more. So she transferred me to the next person, who supposedly was.

He only tried to sell me Amex travel services. He would do nothing more. “Retain me,” I offered. No, he said. (And I wasn’t even nasty. Oh, yes, I can be. But I wasn’t. Since my heart problems, I’ve stopped getting my blood pressure up on calls such as these.)

I got disconnected. Accident?

I called back to get a card sent to me. Instead, I just canceled. Again, no one cared. I had to get transferred one *more* time to deal with transferring my many, many miles to my Continental account.

That’s that. A 35-year customer relationship with untold thousands of dollars of business gone. And no one in Amex could care. No one was empowered or motivated to talk me out of it, only to try to upsell me as I walked out the door.

When Amex calls me a “member” it’s a joke. Always has been. Membership means something. It means that I’m part of a group that cares about me and that I care about. That’s not American Express.

Members is how every business should be looking at the people formerly known as customers today. American Express makes a mockery of the word.

Buh-bye.

  • Hal Espen

    Okay, okay! I’ll get off your lawn!

  • http://donmcarthur.com Don McArthur

    Vengeance is mine, sayeth the blogger. Hey, I saw the original, too, but I often enjoy sequels. :-)

  • Carmister

    I’ve been thinking the same, though I ‘only’ have 30 years in.
    I only use it for travel, originally for the car insurance thing.
    Crap exchange rates plus the fee? No thanks. I’ll finish the year, but restrict it to us travel. Then it’s gone.

  • Jeff

    Prediction: this will be the Amex version of ‘Dell Hell’

    Wil it change anything? Probably not.

    • http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis

      No, I’ve moved on. I’ve seen the true stripes of their culture.

  • Rick

    They have become a disaster of sorts.
    Our Amex business card expires this month and my associate has been hounding me to call them but so far I had held off just because I wanted to see if they had their shit together and would come thru on their own.
    No such luck.

  • http://teachj.wordpress.com Robert Courtemanche

    Had a similar problem about 5-6 years ago with Bank of America. They didn’t seemed concerned until the day we showed up and asked for a cashier’s check for the balance of all of our accounts and then closed them. All of a sudden after weeks of maddening customer service, they were concerned. Too late, Treat me right or I’m gone. I am an especially loyal customer and it seems the only companies I’ve notice who care are Apple and Sprint.

  • Observer

    What do you expect? These companies pay poor college students $7 an hour. I wouldn’t care about you either. The managers who chose and manage the call centre, the IT people who manage the legacy disconnected systems and the many other middle management analysis jobs get paid 10 times more. The real people in the trenches are treated like dirt (maybe an odd party, or fun night out to give off the perception it’s a fun place to work) but at the end of the day, if customer service and retention are treated like dirt, you will be, too.

  • Al Pittampalli

    They probably don’t even know (or care) about this post, and the countless people who are reading it right now. Treating your customers well has always been the right thing to do, but it used to not really matter for business, so companies didn’t care. It’s still the right thing to do today, but now it’s critical to business, and companies like AmEx still living in the dark ages of customer service still don’t care! How foolish.

  • John W Baxter

    At lest out here (in the untamed west) Amex is the card that can be used at Costco. So I have it. No other reason.

    –John (who remembers “Bankamericard”)

  • http://thefuturebuzz.com Adam Singer

    The irony, of course is that AmEx spends a ton of money on their OpenForum site (http://www.openforum.com/). Yet when they deliver an experience like this it tears down almost all of their goodwill built. Inconsistent stories like these show you just how unready many large brands are to be “social.” This is not social behavior.

  • Eric

    Be careful with the automatic charges.

    Under some arcane set of rules you can not cancel an already approved automatic payment via the bank only the service you authorized to charge you can.

    I have had problems in the past with Discover when canceled a service and the Discover card the service kept billing me so they kept sending me a Discover bill.

    It took a lot of time, effort, and grief on my part to cancel both.

    • Christian

      The comment is correct.
      I am suffering that now when I am trying to stop AAA from withdrawing money from my bank account… Yes, cash.
      I have to beg AAA to stop taking my money even though I already cancelled the service.

  • http://www.kentonlarsen.com/ Kenton

    Tip: Visa and Mastercard suck too.

    • http://www.veganatthetable.com John Himmelberger

      Even more so

  • http://jonathonsciola.com Jonathon

    Surprisingly Australia is the most franchised nation in the world with the most franchises per capita for any country. We’re a small population 20million. That’s the size of Mozambique. A successful business in Australia is guaranteed to work in the US because you need 20-30% of any given market here to do well, in the States 1-2% and you’re a millionnaire or worse. The great thing about this post – and perhaps the hidden thing – is that AMEX is a franchise. A franchise is a systemised way of doing business. Don’t get caught up in the legal structure of the business; a franchise can be a variety of models, however the consistency is process-driven, leveraged, turn-key business systems. The worst part about a franchised nation is that we lose the art of customer service on a national level. People forget how to actually care for people. They rely on scripts and manuals and processes to solve problems. However I always say a person is better than a process. In the end a process is there because we haven’t found the right person. I think Jeff was looking for a person. He was wanting to be heard. To be seen. A franchise cannot see a customer in the way a bit of data cannot see the user. It only sees other bits of data and the big picture it sees is limited to the purpose or program it was intended to execute. I am believing for a return to true customer focus. That is why I love small businesses. Niche focused, purple-cow businesses that actually care about their consumer. I wish there was a twitter “tribal” card community we could join and actually share benefits amongst our members. It’s sure to come. Thoughts…

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  • Tony Mariani

    Sadly, this is the norm nowadays for a number of companies who don’t have customer services to empower their employees and loyalty is a thing of the past. They focus more on considerations for new customers than the lifetime value of customers who have paid the freight.

  • http://www.allesblog.de Michael Henke

    Do you care about credit history in any way?

    • Susan Smith

      Why would his credit history matter? he was a member for more than three decades. I’m sure his credit history won’t suffer as a result of this.

      • http://yeahthatskosher.com Dani

        Actually no. Credit has to do with the amount of credit you have available in your name. When you close an account that’s been open for a while, you’re now reducing the amount of credit available in your name, and thus it will reduce your credit score.

        Better to leave the card open (assuming you’re not paying a yearly fee) and not use it.

  • http://www.veganatthetable.com John Himmelberger

    Besides Apple, where can you find good customer service anymore? Compensation structures are so top heavy in today’s environment that so called efficiencies have obliterated any remains of customer service.

  • https://plus.google.com/118434132692780290837/abou Alan Ralph

    Jeff, I went through a similar, if (thankfully) more truncated, version of this when I finally gave up and moved my money away from Barclays in 2003. I’d been with them since just before starting university – about 16 years. Not that they bothered much to help me out during that time – as far as they appeared to be concerned, I was just an account number, and my need to get cash out and my paychecks in were an inconvenience to them.

    After several instances where they managed to lose my paycheck, I finally decided it was time to go. I’d already found another bank – Smile, the online arm of the Cooperative Bank – that not only offered good rates, but also had good customer services. Transferring my balance over should have been fairly straightforward. (It has since been made easier, partly in reaction to cases like mine) But Barclays not only required clarification of my request *twice*, they managed to forget to move over half of my Direct Debit instructions properly. Luckily for me, I’d had the foresight to put my very next paycheck into the new Smile account, otherwise I would have been caught with no money to pay my bills. I phoned Barclays and read them the Riot Act (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Act if you’re unfamiliar with that phrase), and eventually they completed the transfer.

    To this day, I grimace whenever I hear Barclays’s name uttered.

  • Susan Smith

    I completely agree. I was a member for many years and built up 250,000 miles. When it came time to use them, I found out those miles were next to useless. It’s a terrible marketing scam. The customer service has gotten progressively worse but hey, if Amex ignores their customers long enough, they will all go away!

  • tom

    you should have actually talked to them via twitter, their @AmericanExpress account reps are super responsive. Way more worthwhile than talking with an off-shored rep on the phone. Did you even try this? Why not?

    That twitter account can probably figure out and tell you why your continental airline miles are no longer accruing.

    Also, randomly, I travel internationally a lot, and its stupid that you need a certain type of card (the platinum? I’m not sure) to not get charged the international fees, in addition to the conversion rate. Which was why the rep tried to get you to convert.

    • Kim K

      it’s a sad day, when twitter responses get the “best” customer service- we are perpetuating the “squeaky wheel gets the oil” syndrome by making this the way we do business.
      My sister in law uses twitter regularly to claim cancellation and poor service and low and behold, she is made whole each and every time.

  • Rick

    Unless it takes 7 or more digits to display your balance, big financial institutions are not going to concern themselves with your needs. It’s literally not worth it to them.

  • WayneG

    The sad part of this is, I doubt if you’ll get better service somewhere else. I’ve had similar problems with other card services, and can only hope that your problem with AMEX is the exception, rather than the rule.

    If not, I’ll be doing the same.

    – Wayne
    Member since 1973

  • AP

    I had a similar experience with Washington Mutual in 2002. We all know what happened to them….

  • http://www.richullman.com Rich Ullman

    Jeff,
    Good story. Not sure if “sorry to hear it” is appropriate. :)
    I agree with you completely that most institutions treat people, not like people, but like statistics or line items. This leads to poor service and a significant handicap when it comes to today’s “social” media world.

    However… when I read your words, “Retain me,” I got the feeling that you were baiting them. Maybe yes, maybe no. That doesn’t matter, but it does lead me to ask: What could they have done — aside from sending you the new card — that would have retained you? (and made this a happy ending).

  • http://www.redwoodcu.org Tony Hildesheim

    two words.. Credit Union

    Join one today!… where you truely are a ‘member’ and you truely do have a say in how the organization responds to its members…

    There are no paid board of directors
    There is no incentive for the CEO, Board and Executive team to gouge their members (customers)
    You are the shareholder
    They are as sophisticated as any bank and they have every service a bank has
    They don’t charge you unreasonable fees and they are interested in serving you.. not their bottom line.

    Not only that.. their rates and rewards programs rival any out there..

  • Erica

    13 years ago I was a reasonably high level systems employee at a well-known credit card company. I was in a meeting with several senior level VPs who were debating the merits versus the costs of raising fees to our customers. Marketing didn’t want to increase fees; they were afraid they were going to lose customers. Finance said we “had” to increase fees or we wouldn’t make our numbers for the year. Finally, the ranking Finance guy slammed his hand down on the conference room table and screamed, “Goddammit! Don’t you people realize that the only way this bank makes any money is by driving our customers to the brink of bankruptcy?!?!” Tough words to hear 13 years ago, even worse when you take into account the mortgage mess this economy is still reeling from. The people who run Banks and Financial Services companies only care about themselves, not their clients, employees or even shareholders. This is why I avoid doing business with the large banks whenever possible.

  • Alan Tabor

    I’ve been slowly transfering my various accounts over to a local credit union. They all piss me off so it was a matter of deciding who I’d prefer to be irritated by. The credit unions heart seems to be in the right place, so they won.

  • http://www.kembry.com Kenny Embry, Ph.D.

    Good! Companies who have lousy customer service deserve to be abandoned. Hurray for capitalism!

  • Steve

    I’ve had to have my AmEx card replaced at least three times. They have always sent a new card via overnight mail. The first person I’ve talked to has always been able to arrange it so I am surprised to read of your experience.

  • http://www.customersatisfactionevaluation.com Anne Miner

    American Express used to deliver top drawer service – it was a pleasure to deal with them and we truly believed that “membership has its priveledges”. One of those priviledges is “no spending limit” – of oucrse you have to pay the full balance each month – Amex is a charge card NOT a credit card.

    Imagine my surprise when I received a call recently – supposedly, a customer care call. “We want to be sure you are aware of all the options available to you … we noticed that your spending increased last month …” “It did?” “Oh yes.” (The increase was less than $2K).

    And the caller proceeded to offer me the “options” of either providing 3 months bank statements or my company financial statements. What the heck?

    When I said, “I understood … no spending limit. This sounds to me like you are saying there actually is a spending limit.”

    The caller did not seem to grasp the issue – just kept making reference to ensuring I knew what my options were.

    NO thank you! I have been a “member” for 23 years! Our card usage has varied up and down by 10′s of thousands – what is going on?!

    And, now having heard about the loss of airline points and additional charges on foreign exchange, we will be very vigilant about our use of “the card”.

    I am not ready to cancel my card – there are times and places when only Amex will do (e.g., at Costco) BUT you can be sure that we will further limit our Amex purchases.

    As a customer satisfaction and retention specialist, I can tell you that Amex is well back in the pack of companies who only talk about caring for their customers.

    • http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis

      I switched to the Continental Mastercard. For those times when I need AmEx, I’ll hold onto the AmEx blue card, which is free; I’ll stop paying them fees.

  • Katie

    Bank of America now has a competitor card – Business Preferred. Free if you have a checking acct and better rewards (I think you get 10,000 pts to start and then again on anniversary).

    • http://www.facebook.com/Yoyolate Rogelio Hernandez

      Chase has something similar and their rewards are very nice, or you can get cash.

  • Donald

    I have recently encountered a moment of truth with AMEX. I have been a member since 1981, and when my platinum card was recently compromised I was told I would have to wait 10-14 days for a replacement. Let me get this right, Platinum card holder, in buiness , on travel and no card. Thanks AMEX, you suck.

    What are membership fees for. When I called for support the accent of the person was so bad, i could not understand a word. Nice. Thanks again AMEX you suck.

  • Mr. lee

    Our company account was over by approx $700.00 and Amex declined an additional $418.00 charge for a lunch order I placed. (My Company has triple A credit and my personal credit is in excellent standing too) After speaking to two moron customer service reps: I gave them two options.. A. put the charge through or B. Close out my two personal accounts .Looks like we went with option B. What bunch of brain dead morons.

  • AMEXSUCKS

    AMEX SURE DOES SUCK… AS DO MOST CORP’S….THAT JUST WANT MONEY… PERIOD…I USED MY AMEX FOR LAST TIME….AT A STUPID UPS STORE IN OTTAWA CANADA… THEY SHIPPED…SWITCHED MY BOXES AND SENT THEM TO THE OPPSITE ENDS…. THEN THEY HAD THE NERVE TO TELL ME MY FAULT…I HAD TO GET PICTURES TO SHOW THEM… DAYS LATER…IT WAS DONE FINALLY…BUT WAY TO LATE…AS FOR AMEX…THEY SAID THEY WOULD TAKE OFF THE CHARGE…I TOLD THEN THE TRUTH… THEY TOOK OFF THE CHARGE, THEN PUT IT BACK… THEY PICKED THEIR MERCHANT BS OVER TRUTH… FINE… I AM TRYING NOW TO GET COSTCO TO DROP THEM…AMEX… I ONLY NEED THIS STUPID AMEX FOR COSTCO…
    F THEM ALL….

  • Steve

    As an Amex Centurion Cardholder, my experience is completely opposite from yours. The service I see is truly amazing and they are 110% committed on taking care of my needs.
    Sorry to hear you had a bad experience, but perhaps it’s just an exception to the balance of your years with them.

  • William

    In Belgium Amex is the best card available,platinum holder since several years,hundreds
    of transactions,never had any issue,staff pick up the phone 24/7,well trained and friendly.
    Surprised to read all this,i guess it all depends who owns the franchise in the country you reside.

    • http://www.facebook.com/Yoyolate Rogelio Hernandez

      AMEX does not have franchises or leases. They do have different teams and managers around the world. You must have the lucky customer service team. But for Spanish, Portuguese or English customers, our calls got routed to Mexico, India and Canada and the service blows.

  • robokopp

    After being a member for 36 years I am also going through the same poor customer service and lack of caring by people on the phone. As I went on a business trip overseas my account went “under review” and suspended pending receipt of information. If the information is not sent within 5 days then the cards (Platinum & Blue) will be permanently cancelled. All this without having missed a payment over all these years, and even prepay by sending in funds to cover upcoming charges. I ended up begging business partners for cash to cover my hotel bills as I left home without my Visa and MasterCards.Citibank was at least helpful in sending me a MasterCard within 2 days so I can get back to “normal”. Only venting but will await the decision of AX on my accounts. Even if they lift the suspension I will cancel anyway.

  • cws, cpa

    I’ve only been a member for 12 years. But I gave a $30,000 charitable contribution and, within one day, DECREASED my credit limit. Apparently they don’t like charities. Then I carried the balance for a while because they pissed me off (well, I really showed them since they hosed me on interest). I still carry a balance because of the princple of it. They will eventually decrease my credit limit to zero as I pay it down. That’s ok, because in a separate move, they issued my wife a new credit card with a high limit. Hello??

  • http://www.facebook.com/Yoyolate Rogelio Hernandez

    Is crap. Stay away from them.

    They double charged my monthly payment. I called before the payments went through ( I knew they were coming because of the emails I received) to advice that they were about to overdraw my account. Someone in that call told me not to worry and that they would back charge the overdraft fee to my bank. Gave me his name and a “special phone.”

    I call the “special phone” and the dude that answer sounded condescending and smart ass with an attitude. He said that they do not refund when it is my mistake. I explained the problem which is that their system charged again when I had already paid.

    He almost said, not my problem. I referenced him to the previous call two days ago, he said they dont do that.

    I said, then why does AMEX lie to its costumers?

    He said, I didn’t say Mark (the other guy) was lying, I just said we don’t do that.

    So I say, well, if he said AMEX would do something that you are not able or willing to do, then someone lied. Either he lied or you are lying but someone lied to me.

    Again he denied it.

    I just said, OK fine, let me check what crap I can buy with my Membership rewards and I’ll call back to cancel this stupid card.

    Called back, the card is now cancelled.

    I’ll stick to my Visa, Master Card and Discovery. Discovery has a SUPERB service. As good as AMEX Gold Card used to be without costing an arm and a leg.

    AMEX is doing very bad business, or they dont care for their membership clients any more. This days you can get an AMEX card with as little as a deposit in Walmart… no seriously. And the Walmart prepaid card has the same “benefits” as the AMEX green.

    So… Why would one pay a membership fee to only get lied to and treated like a child?

    Beats me.

    Sayonara AMEX, never going to see you again in my wallet.

  • anon

    Jeff, I came to your page after I googled “american express sucks”. After tonight’s experience with their CSR. I will cancel my card to go back to VISA. Your experience with the CSRs echoed mine

    I bought some concert ticket from an AMEX affiliated website. Unknown to me, the website tricked me into thinking the entire concert was sold out because I clicked on the Amex link to see what special offers are. Apparently, they saved a cookies on my browser so I tried to purchase the ticket, I was told only 6 left. I bought the tickets with crappy seating position because I thought they were sold out. Immediately after purchase, I felt suspicious and used another computer to look at the same concert. It turned out there are hundreds of tickets available. I was tricked into purchasing the tickets with poor seating thinking it was sold out!

    I then called AMEX. First, they said they are not affiliated with the website. Then I told them it has an AMEX lounge and a link taking to the AMEX sign up page, the CSR basically said we are not responsible for any of our partner’s actions. She even said “For example, even though we are partner with Costco, we don’t care if they provide bad service because we are not related.” I told her that your partner reflects upon your reputation. She simply said “I don’t agree with you. Our partner has nothing to do with us.” What CSR disagree with their customer blatantly?

    I continue to mention that it does not matter what the fact is or whether AMEX is truly responsible. What mattered was my perception of AMEX has been tainted. I will not have experienced this if I didn’t click the AMEX link or used my AMEX card. What matters now is how I will stop using my AMEX card and tell others not to use it.

    Guess what the CSR said? “I don’t agree with you. Amex is not responsible.” Woah! Similar to Jeff’s experience, I guess AMEX really don’t give a crap about people stop using their cards! I don’t see any advantages of AMEX over VISA. In fact, it is not accepted in many locations including IKEA. The only used I used mine because the logo looked cool. After this experience, I’m shredding my card and closing this account.

    Extremely unhappy ex-AMEX customer
    Canada

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Kelleen-Farrell/1298727835 Kelleen Farrell

    This company should be forced out of business. They, like so many companies, preyed on my college daughter and gave her a card which she promptly ran up and then had troubles paying. The other companies (Chase and Old Navy) worked with her; AmEx refused. So I have been making regular payments on the account for her while she finishes college. Not good enough for AmEX- they sued my daughter. After contacting CEO Kenneth Chenault, they called and said if I made regular payments, they would withdraw the suit (remember I have been doing that all along). The rub is that they have put us through hell for over a year now, only to agree to a payment schedule I was already doing. Now, however, they cannot get the balance straight, one amount one day, a different amount the next. I cancelled my personal card when we first had trouble over this. Now, I want to see the company go bankrupt and shut down.These people are despicable.

    • D’Artagnan

      I do not like them, but how can you blame them for your daughter being an idiot? Would you also hate Ford if your daughter was driving one when she got in an accident?

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Kelleen-Farrell/1298727835 Kelleen Farrell

    Forgot to mention, Rosemary Rudd at AmEx said they had withdrawn the suit and not to show up in court. Turns out they DID NOT do that and we needed to be in court. I assume they lie so they can win by default.

  • IntegrityIsEverthing

    Internally I have never worked for a company that rewards failure in management more than American Express. They company is a social club of ineffective leadership. It’s infected a whole slurry of other companies. My moto is when Amex managers come knocking on your door for a job, be highly skeptical of their resumes. It’s a cult of lies and deciet.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/dave.chmela Dave Chmela

    My mom has had her Amex card for 45 years… she currently just owed $1,300, and paid $600 of that yesterday. Shes 84 and is disabled. I went to buy gas today and the pump denied me, we called Amex, to find that the day AFTER they accepted her $600 payment, THAY CANCELLED HER CARD… not suspended, I said CANCELLED. sShe was in tears on the phone, they didnt CARE!