xolinlevh

So a couple weeks back (on a monday morning), we sent a wire transfer from BoA to Amex for $5,000 to pay on my account. BoA said it would be there instantly, and amex said it should take 24-48 hours to post (tuesday or wednesday). By Wednesday evening nothing had been posted, so i called in and requested an update, the reps claimed they couldnt see my transfer but assured me that if it took the full 48 and was 'received' on wednesday that it would post the next day. So by end of thursday nothing had posted. I called in again, got passed between 4 agents in 4 departments before someone finally said i needed the IMAD number from my bank, which i provided, and they were FINALLY able to locate my wire and apply it.

Fast forward to today when i received an email from amex stating:
"This is regarding a payment of $5,000.00 on your above referenced account.

During a recent review of your account, we discovered that your payment of $5,000.00 was applied to another account. Please be advised that we have transferred the payment to your account ending in *****. The credit will appear on your upcoming statement."

and further down it states:
"To avoid the delay in the posting of payments to your account, we kindly request that you provide your complete American Express account information in the wire transmittal form. For further details' we request you to contact the third party/financial institution to update your correct American Express account information."

So what it seems like to me is that BoA when sending the wire somehow truncated the details attached to the wire when sending to Amex (I verified through my statements and receipts from them that i provided the FULL correct information amex gave me for sending the wire). And because they dropped some part of the information my money got routed by amex into some random person's account. Has anyone else ever paid via wire, had any issues similar?

LAXRuss

I have sent a number of wire transfers to AMEX to balance my account through the years. My assumption is that you are trying to pay into a U.S. dollar AMEX account. While you obviously did not provide wire and account details, my assumption is that AMEX provided you a bank with an ABA (American Banker's Association) number in New York and a specific bank account number to pay into. Likely they will have asked that you provide information with the wire regarding the AMEX account number that you wish to credit. Usually by wiring the money, if you have a helpful US bank, they should be able to check with their contacts at the FED and the transfer should be nearly instantaneous with a confirmation provided the same day. Late afternoon transfers are still dicey.

If you used a wire transfer from a US account to AMEX's US bank account in New York, my guess is that the hang up may have been on the side of AMEX. The money likely went into a general account and it would have been up to AMEX staff to actually correctly credit the funds to the correct account that you wanted to pay. They may have seen your SSN or some other identifier and simply deposited the funds into the first AMEX account you have that showed up on their screen. Obviously, you should have a case to have them refund any late fees or other problems that their mistake may have caused.

My guess is that there is more to your story that meets the eye-- if you are paying from a US bank account to credit a US AMEX card, I would think you can simply use their online bill pay service as it credits the same day. Admittedly, perhaps they wanted confirmation of same day funds receipt in which case I understand that you may have made the wire transfer.

In my case, I have made important large payments to the International Dollar Card in London using a Federal Reserve wire transfer from a US bank to IDC's New York bank account. In those instances, after I received confirmation that the funds were transferred, I had to pass IDC the information so that their payment section could search through their US bank account deposits to actually confirm receipt of the FED wire transfer.

The transfer may be instantaneous but AMEX still has to deal with the credit in a bank account where it is likely receiving hundreds of credits. Hope my experience helps you decipher how to handle your situation better in the future.

xolinlevh

mia

LAXRuss's suggestion is to use your bank's online billpay service to push the payment to American Express, rather than using the americanexpress.com facility to pull a payment from your bank account.

xolinlevh

Ahh my mistake then i misunderstood. Im really hesitant to use that service as it lead to a knee-jerk cancelation of my accounts previously. For those who dont remember, i paid off my amex's in full about 2 months ago using that exact feature from my bank. Upon completion of the payments amex instantly closed all my accounts citing (among other reasons) the use of bill pay to pay my bill. While those decisions were eventually over turned and i have my accounts back.....rather not tempt fate

Centurion

I suggest you do a pull payment eft from the Amex web site as this solves a lot of potential problems. Just make sure you have money in your bank account. : )

mapletree

Really?? That's weird. Bill Pay is one of the standard ways to pay one's bills...especially credit card! I hit all my cards through Bill Pay every month. Have been sending Bill Pay from my bank to AX for the last ~10 years...

xolinlevh

To summarize from my other thread thats around here somewhere where i discussed what happened:

Id been carrying a relatively high balance across my accounts for about a year or so and as part of my new years resolution decided to start the year fresh with no debt. Sold one of my cars, moved some assets around, and in one swoop paid of my Amexs, visas, and car loans. After waiting nearly a week for the bill pay to amex to post, the moment it did i got 2 emails saying my accounts were now closed. They cited reasons including high use of cards, violations of cardholder agreement(?...?), etc. After some fighting and managing to reach executives at Amex they reviewed it and agreed that the red flags from using billpay (and the other reasons cited) were flawed and my accounts were restored.

Suffice to say since then ive been wary of using bill pay....

Centurion

You could have triggered a "bust out fraud" alert. The crook over pays an account with a fake payment or nsf payment momentarily giving a higher credit line on a card, sometimes even higher than the credit card

mia

Were those billpay transactions also made from a bank account that you had not been using to pay American Express?

xolinlevh

Paid the amounts in full, no over pay. On one account was actually short by like 100 due to a pending charge that hadnt hit when payment went in

Same bank, different account. Family account not my personal one. I can see amex getting worried though i was more shocked they went right for the nuclear option of closing my accounts without so much as a simple phone call to me to ask about the payment.

mia

Thank you for the clarification. I think its likely that American Express reacted to a large payment from an unfamiliar account, rather than to the method of payment per se. I wouldn't bother with wire transfer if there is a circumstance where you cannot pay through the americanexpress.com method.

xolinlevh

Yea my suprise really was just that rather then ask me, a good standing customer since 08, they would just cancel everything. I mean if I was them and I was worried about the validity of a payment, I'd ask the customer. Instead they waited till they had my money and then gave me the boot. In the future I have no plans to wire, only did in this instance as they would not permit a second payment from the new account until the next bulling cycle.

USCTrojan83

On two occasions I've had payments post to the wrong account. Once was my fault (pushed a payment from my bank but to the wrong AMEX account), the other was the CSR applied it to the wrong account. Both times, as soon as the payment posted, I called AMEX and they were able to have the payment reapplied to the correct account within 24 hours. Surprisingly simple process and is done all the time, I'm told.

shankargaur

In my case I logged into my AMEX account and paid via the direct debit option ( I have my checking account setup in their website )

I saw the money taken off my checking account but it never appeared in my AMEX account, after I week I contacted both my bank and AMEX , they are now trying to figure out what happened, but the entry in my checking account is below -

03/27/14 AMEX PAYMENT ONLINE PMT 140326 3270 5401 3381 1797 1785 $608.28

It should have been -

03/27/14 AMEX PAYMENT ONLINE PMT 140326 3270 SHANKAR GAUR $608.28

GOD ONLY KNOWS WHATS GOING ON !