American Express Membership Rewards - Problem with recurring charge

I am a plat Amex holder and am having an ongoing problem with a recurring charge. Every month a $20 charge for everquest (an online game) appears on my statement. I have not played this game in over a year and the last time I logged into the site, I cancelled my membership.

Several months later my wife (she pays the bills) asked me about the charge, and I said that I had cancelled the service etc. I emailed their customer service and never heard back from them. I have changed my computer as well as my ISP (and email address) and I don't remember my login password. I told all of this to Amex, and said that the charges were unauthorized, but they said that they couldn't permanently cancel the charge and it has to be done on a monthly basis. So my wife has to call every month and it's a huge annoyance. I'm thinking of canceling my card and using VISA instead. I charge between 50-100K/ year so I'm not a huge account, but I'm sure they'd prefer to have the account than not.

Does anyone have a similar experience or suggestions as to how to fix this problem? I'm flabbergasted that they can continue to charge the account even though I have told them several times that the charges are unauthorized.

I had a similar experience some 10 years ago, where the offending party kept charging a fee monthly even after repeated phone calls and registered letters.

In frustration I called Amex and told them I lost my card. Result, a new card (with a different #) at no cost and no more unwanted charges. Of course this is a bit cumbersome if you have a number of monthly direct debits on your current card.

I would recommend using Amex' free Private Payments single-use numbers for any Internet transaction.

[This message has been edited by monahos (edited 03-25-2002).]

Chet,

Have you tried contacting Sony On-Line and having them make sure that they cancel your account?

Cancelling your AMEX Charge Card seems a little extreme to just get rid of a $20/month charge when you spend between 50-100k on it each year.

I did a quick look on the Everquest website, and found this link. Maybe it will help you resolve your issues.

http://www.station.sony.com/services/customer-account.jhtml

Good Luck,
Nick.

Thanks for the suggestions. I called AMEX and told them I lost my card. I also asked them to note in the file that I don't want any recurring charges to transfer over to the new account number.

Problem solved (hopefully).

Sorry to report that this may not solve your problem (even though it seems like a good idea).

One day, Amex denied my charge for lunch. When I called to ask why, they said my account was frozen for non-payment. Since I spent thousands per month with them and always paid, I asked how this could be. They said that a $29.95 charge was unpaid on an account I had closed two years ago.

Amex was not impressed that the account had been closed for some time, nor were they impressed that I never authorized this charge. They were particularly not impressed that the $29.95 represented 1/100 of my then spending habits. Also, it didn't bother them that nobody had told me that I had a balance on this old account. They just shut me down. Oh well.

Well here is my Discover story of 7 years ago. Left my card at the hotel's front desk at check in. Went back later and they could not find it. Reported my card as lost and it was replaced a few days later with a new number. Everything was fine after that, except 6 months later my credit line on my checking account was cancelled. When I called my bank they said they received a report from Trans Union about non-payment. Contacted Trans Union and after faxing my signature they told me that I had not paid my Discover bill. Not true, so I called Discover and found out that 1 charge from the "lost card" was never transferred and since the old card had "stop statements" that I had no idea this was going on. They transferred the charge to my current account and issued a letter to Trans Union who in turn issued a letter to my checking account bank. After two weeks and a dozen phone calls things were back to normal.

Moral of the story: If you ever report a card as lost or stolen, check to make sure all charges transfer to the new account.

By the way, after I reported my card as lost, the 3rd shift hotel person found my card http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/redface.gif

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Moral of the story: If you ever report a card as lost or stolen, check to make sure all charges transfer to the new account.</font>

All existing and approved charges are the key words.

Charges obviously made long after the card was reported lost are treated as illegal charges since the credit card number will be invalid. Allowing charges on a lost card's number defeats the point of reporting a card that could have been stolen.

I also had this problem. I honestly didn't notice that I had been billed monthly for an internet service I had cancelled until I changed cards (replaced worn out Plat Delta Op for new card -- got new number). AMEX still sent me bills under the old number with the one unauthorized charge. They claimed that there was NO WAY to stop this unless the merchant agreed to stop it. I talked to several supervisors who said the same thing. Its another case where AMEX suspends reality for their own convenience. Obviously an unauthorized charge on a closed account should be DENIED, not passed along to the former account holder. So be careful

One simple way is to review your credit reports every year. It can be obtained for free in many states, from Equifax and TransUnion. All credit card and loan debts will be reported on it. When a card is lost, a new number is issued, the credit report will show "Account Transferred". You can see from your report if there is any amount due on that old (or any) account.

The list is updated once a month from the banks so you will make sure it is quite current. If you are paranoid, you can subscirbe to one of those online "credit monitor" service for a monthly fee. You will get an email alert every time there is a drop in your credit score or change in your credit status. You will prevent suprising bank account freezing this way because you get notified before banks do. You can correct errors before they turn into a big mess.