Originally Posted by
gnomie
And even if the bank makes an error and admits to it and provides documentation, it can take Amex a long time to correct it. This is about 20 years ago in New Jersey the rules are when someone dies, 50% of the assets in a bank account are temporarily frozen, including joint accounts. In error, the bank froze the entire account and denied payment on all checks, including payments to Amex although there was more than enough funds in the checking account. Had the Amex card for almost 40 years and this was the first problem with a payment, yet Amex immediately shut down the account, Even though we obtained notarized letters from the bank admitting to their mistake, it took Amex about two months to reinstate the account while they "investigated" the situation. Every other creditor was quite sympathetic and removed all late fees, etc immediately. My Mom has refused to use Amex since this incident., whereas for the previous 40 years it was the primary card in the family.
Amex never likes to admit their errors. A while back I noticed my MR account was suddenly closed. I called in and had an awfully hard time getting them to reopen it. They claimed I somehow stole someone's points. Looking at my account I saw that a bunch of points had been added to my account over the prior few months, but they didn't line up with my minimal purchases during that time. While discussing the closure to Amex, I finally figured out what happened. About 20 years earlier I had a corporate card with a company I was now no longer associated with. At some point in the interim they had finally rolled over card numbers such that whatever card number had been associated with my account before was once again valid -- and being used. And because the connection somewhere in Amex's systems had never been deleted, the points from that corporate card started getting sent to me. They ended up replacing most/all of the points I had earned but they certainly made it seem as if they were doing me a fav
r.