American Express Membership Rewards - Disappearing online payments recently?




karthik
Mar 24, 08, 2:16 pm
About 3 or 4 weeks ago, there was some sort of website glitch and two cards that I had scheduled payments on were not showing any scheduled payments. I went ahead and rescheduled payment, and those went through fine.

Unfortunately, one more card lost its scheduled payment, and I didn't notice until now, making the payment past due. I just called Amex, the rep took payment by phone, but said the card would probably end up with a late fee and have its rates reset.

Did anyone else have scheduled online payments mysteriously disappear in the past month?

This is especially annoying since I have a moderate balance on that card that's at a 1.9% promotional APR for life, which could potentially be reset now.

Since I didn't have the confirmation number (which is unfortunately only shown online and not emailed; I guess I'll be saving those in the future), the rep told me that she had no way to verify that I had made a payment. I pointed out to her that I have several other Amex cards with a flawless payment history and asked if she could rectify the situation as a courtesy based on that, and she actually got a bit hostile and repeated the above in a tone that was practically accusing me of lying about having scheduled a payment. I let it go at that, though I see a late fee has now posted to the account (dated yesterday for some reason), so I guess I'll call back and hopefully get someone more reasonable.

After that, I asked the rep to look into why I'd been charged small business linkage fees (3 charged, only 1 credited back) for converting a Gold card to a Green card. She looked at it and said she'd transfer me...and she did transfer me, to another personal card representative! The new rep had no idea why I was transferred to her since she was in the same department. I suspect the original rep was worried about her "numbers" or whatever for handling too long of a call with me. (The new rep transferred me to MR, and I hung up after 5 minutes on hold since I didn't feel like spending any more time on the phone then.)


karthik
Mar 25, 08, 9:24 pm
Amex did me right with no hassles for once! I called back and explained the situation to another CSR after the late fee posted, and she immediately told me that she understood and would take care of it. 5 minutes on hold and the late fee was credited, finance charges credited, promo interest rates reset, and I was assured that I would not receive a late on my credit report or within Amex's systems.

The disappearing payments still worry me. The two payments that I re-submitted (after being told the same day by an Amex CSR that they were indeed having website problems) went through, but this one must have disappeared some days later. I'll be noting down all payment confirmation numbers in the future, since they only display on the web and are not emailed. It might be prudent for others to do the same in case you ever end up in a situation where a payment does not post for some reason.



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