American Express Membership Rewards - Centurion - stolen goods

I used to collect golf putters. I bought some putters from the US (I live in the UK), all from one household name player, using PayPal funded by Amex Centurion. The putters were worth the value of a modest family car, and were certified by the manufacturer as genuine, but turned out to be stolen, so I gave them back to the player concerned who lives in the UK part of the time.

The thief was convicted of grand larceny, and the person whom he sold the putters to, who in turn sold them to me, refused to offer any money back. PayPal, predictably, denied any liability.

I contacted Amex and the person I spoke to in disputes, to whom I sent a load of material and evidence, thought that they would be able to refund me and recover the money. But after weeks of prevarication, they have also said sorry (in a very brief letter) and advised me to get an attorney in the US.

I guess I am not an important enough customer, and as a result I will soon not be a customer at all, but I feel they could have done more.

If any of you guys have any advice or pull with Amex, I would greatly appreciate it. More specific details available if that is the case.

What more should they do? Put another way, which piece of their program suggests that using them to purchase an item includes a refund if it is stolen property?

I'm sorry that you've lost so much money buying stolen goods, but you would normally go after the thief for restitution, not the company that processed the payment.

I used to collect golf putters. I bought some putters from the US (I live in the UK), all from one household name player, using PayPal funded by Amex Centurion . ( ... )

You didn't buy the goods with your Amex card by an Amex affiliated partner.
In this case, Amex has nothing to do whis this .

It would be the same if you withdraw cash at an ATM with Amex, and buy something with the cash. Amex is not involved at all in this transaction.

@ sbm12 : Amex did NOT process the payment, Paypal did it.

I don't think Amex has any liability here. You'd be better off being mad at PayPal than at Amex. Sue the seller, that's who has your money.

Well maybe then they should not have told me they could help when I first called, knowing it was PayPal, nor then took two months to write a curt letter.

I'm sure that the same thing would have been resolved in your favor in the US. I would bet large sums of money that buried somewhere in the Paypal terms is that Paypal cannot be used for illegal transactions. Resale of stolen goods (even unintentionally) is an illegal transaction. Amex should therefore dispute with Paypal and find in your favor, even if Paypal disagrees. I went through exactly this with eBay, Paypal, and Amex Cent UK with a stolen mobile phone - and was, in due time, credited the money owed me.

I'm sure that the same thing would have been resolved in your favor in the US. I would bet large sums of money that buried somewhere in the Paypal terms is that Paypal cannot be used for illegal transactions. Resale of stolen goods (even unintentionally) is an illegal transaction. Amex should therefore dispute with Paypal and find in your favor, even if Paypal disagrees. I went through exactly this with eBay, Paypal, and Amex Cent UK with a stolen mobile phone - and was, in due time, credited the money owed me.

Well said. And, point in fact, Amex does routinely have MAJOR issues with PayPal - and in quite nearly every situation I've ever heard involving these 2 - you simply dispute the charge with Amex, and they refund your money.

As an "added benefit" - since your an Amex Centurion card holder (as I am ;)), I would think this is a rather modest amount of money (I'm conjecturing equating to $10k-$15k) for Amex Cent, and therefore they should simply goodwill reimburse you, if they can't designate it any another way.

I've had many a ridiculous thing happen to purchases I've made with my Cent over the years, and some for far far more money than I'm conjecturing the OP has lost here, and have never had an issue with Amex reimbursing.

To those with ire at the OP posting in the thread:
Yes, these situations might not be specifically designated in the T&C's of the card - HOWEVER, the purpose (and benes) of the Amex Cent far exceeds a PLT, and IME in situations past, the CS that goes along with it elucidates that. @:-)

To the OP:
If your charging at least $250k a year (or GBP equiv, as it were) in good and services on the card, this should not be an issue in the least for them. I would escalate this matter to Amex Cent bus services, and then to Amex HQ if need be. I cannot imagine a scenario, even with the goods having been stolen unbeknownst to you, where Cent doesn't reimburse you. Good luck to you.

had many a ridiculous thing happen to purchases I've made with my Cent over the years, and some for far far more money than I'm conjecturing the OP has lost here, and have never had an issue with Amex reimbursing.

To those with ire at the OP posting in the thread:
Yes, these situations might not be specifically designated in the T&C's of the card - HOWEVER, the purpose (and benes) of the Amex Cent far exceeds a PLT, and IME in situations past, the CS that goes along with it elucidates that. @:-)

To the OP:
If your charging at least $250k a year (or GBP equiv, as it were) in good and services on the card, this should not be an issue in the least for them. I would escalate this matter to Amex Cent bus services, and then to Amex HQ if need be. I cannot imagine a scenario, even with the goods having been stolen unbeknownst to you, where Cent doesn't reimburse you. Good luck to you.

You'd think so, right? But in a dispute with BA with which CTS was CLEARLY at fault, Amex refused to credit the $6k or so for 18 months...and eventually got BA to do it. So Amex isn't so quick to jump on the comp trigger, even on a not-insignificant Cent account.

Should we guess as to the identity of the famous golfer selling hot goods? I'm going to go with John Daly.

I've learned the lesson to be very careful of any purchase when the AMEX charge card is run through PayPal. A relative last year purchased a prepaid conference package. The conference organizer had the website set up so that charges for the conference attendance and hotel rooms were run through PayPal when signing up on the site. Six months after the event concluded the Westin back charged for the four nights conference lodging. The hotel's claim was that the conference organizer never paid the hotel for the rooms. AMEX's position was that the hotel has 365 days to backcharge for unpaid charges. Our position to AMEX was that we wanted to dispute either the Westin for the backcharge or the original charge for which the room was paid. After another six month of dispute, AMEX finally said the hotel was within its rights to backcharge and there was nothing they could do with the organizer because the organizer had run the charge through PayPal. As a courtesy, AMEX put the charge back in dispute yet again as we await a final decision over a year after the original charge was made. The conference organizer is out there still organizing events and has the gall to have "ethics" in its name.

I suspect we may ultimately be liable for paying the $800 in room charges a second time and legal action would not be cost effective. In any case, when PayPal takes such a hands-off approach to investigating such transactions that have passed through their system, it makes me realize that they should only be a payment method of last resort. Pay Pal's position was they could not even evaluate a transaction that was more than six months old. My response was that we contacted PayPal as soon as we became aware of this situation and that their inactivity basically sends the message that if you plan to perpetrate a fraud using Pay Pal, just set it up such that it will not come to light with the customer until at least six months after the transaction has closed.

If any of you guys have any advice or pull with Amex, I would greatly appreciate it. More specific details available if that is the case.

Kind of a strange case, but my employee transferred money out of my bank account directly to their Amex card... they noted the transfer as going to my card and I didn't catch it.

Amex made a partial refund to me of the money spent by my former employee.

I think highly of Amex!

I agree that it should be hard for Amex to wash its hands completely here. Spitzer and his crack DA team in NY pierced this Paypal thing a few years back, forcing amex to take on additional liability and making back-payments. I got some money myself for an unwise transaction I made, which ended up being fraudulent.

However, procedurally there may be a few wrinkles involved. The fact that the card holder is in the UK, likely reduces Amex liability - or at least the card holder's ability to prove that it exist. In addition, the fact that the holder passed the clubs on to their rightful owner, makes it harder to utilize the normal avenues. Typically you return the merchandize and get your money back. Whether you return them because they are defective (Purchase protection), outside of the store's normal return window (Return protection), warranty issue outside of warranty period (Extended Warranty) or just regular fraud (Fraud Protection), they all follow a simple formula whereby you notify Amex, they research your claim and ask you to send them the merchandise before issuing a credit.

In this case, while amex could claim that "the right thing" was done, it is really hard for them to turn around and make a claim against anybody else (including PayPal) because they would have allowed the card holder to walk away (or benefit) from the merchandise. And since Amex a lot of the time self insures, they rely on being able to pass the buck. As some other posters have noted, the only way for Amex to right this thing would be to comp the card holder.

And while I by no means know all the facts in question, having a cent card doesn't cost justify paying out this claim. (There can be many other reasons beside costs, of course. Don't get me wrong.) You can get the card with a mere $250K in annual spending, which is let's say $10K in merchant fees, at least a quarter of which go back in form of points, and let's not forget the cost of servicing cent holders. (Whether or not you count the network costs, is optional, but my guess is that amex operates with an internal rate of return between 1-1.5 % on the network costs.)

I wouldn't let them off the hook though, but make the claim that you would return the clubs to cancel the transaction because it was fraudulent.

As a sidenote, PayPal transactions are so fraught with risk that they should be avoided at all cost. It absolutely didn't improve when they got bought by eBay, a marketplace designed for fraud. ;) OK, not designed for fraud, and I'm sure eBay doesn't want to have it happen either. But as a sometime recreational eBay user, I find it more than just a little strange that over 50% of all auctions (admittedly not many, but more than 10) I have set up in the last years have either been shut down for fraudulent activity, or the winning bidder was a scam artist. :mad: