Edited to fit... Rewards From 1/1 - 11/3 of this year, they have paid me $463.14 just to use their card. There is no annual fee on my card and I earn the following. There are annual limits, that's why I posted a real example above. - 6% on groceries (go to walmart Neighborhood market, NOT Supercenters) - 6% on select streaming services - 3% on transit - 3% on Gas No interest long term payback (plan-it) I bought $19k in appliances after we finished building our house. I put it all on the American Express card and set up a "plan-it" to pay it back in 2 years (the maximum length, I believe). After doing this, you just pay your adjusted balance each month to pay this back with zero interest. Amex does have some retailers who simply won't take their card. The retailers will straight out tell you the reason is, "Amex's fees are ridiculous." So be warned that you will run into that. That being said, I really don't find that many locations that won't take it and I know the large retailer fees are the reason they pay me to use the card. The truth is, if you shop at a place that takes Amex or any credit cards, you are already paying those fees even if you are paying with cash (and I'm collecting some of what you are paying). I'm not going to get into the ethics of this, but hopefully you understand that this is the truth of the situation. So now lets talk about last week. Remember this is 8 years into my relationship with Amex and I've probably had one late payment in those 8 years time, at least that I remember. After that late payment, a long time ago, I was charged interest(or a fee, I don't remember) for the first time ever. To avoid this, I eventually made the call to start auto-paying the card. We've moved into the house we spent 3 years building, we bought appliances that we are still paying back. Additionally I am paying a family member back on top of all this, so things are definitely tight financially. I had to pause the auto-pay (which I have set to pay early) to strategically make some payments after the direct deposit hits. Well last week, I forgot to do that and the auto-pay failed and the bank returned it. Two days later my salary direct deposited and Amex retried their transaction and got their money, but they put a hold on my cards. I checked with my bank and confirmed that Amex did have their money and that the transaction completed fully on that day. Amex wasn't having it. They said the card hold would drop off after 24-48 hours. Every day for 7 days straight they told me to wait 24-48 hours (I'm not sure they know how times works). Yesterday, the 6th day since Amex's payment completed from my bank. My partner and I had enough. So I called back Account Services two more times that day. The final time I told them that what they have done so far is unacceptable that I wasn't accepting what they were offering (which was basically nothing) and that their service simply wasn't good enough. They literally told me the same thing I heard the first time I talked to anyone. Please just wait another 24.... to 48 hours more. At this point I was determined to do the only thing I had left. Send a formal complaint email. Except Amex has no customer complaint email. They did once, but they don't anymore. I tried both their twitter link and facebook link, which are still up on their site, but neither accepts messages anymore. So I went to the chat on the site and asked the representative where I could file a complaint. In that complaint I requested a refund of the Returned Payment Fee, since I didn't feel like Amex was fulfilling any part of their side of the bargain. I said "I'm happy to pay a fee, if I feel like it's facilitating anything, but so far I've had no facilitation whatsoever." That representative said they would file the complain internally word for word and also said they would remove/waive the fee. I haven't seen this yet, but I should "in 24-48 hours." So the person with the least amount of authority gave me the greatest amount of service and beyond that this entire experience is nearly as bad as it possibly could be. So you can take what you will from this. I acknowledge that the trigger of the situation was fully my fault. I allowed the returned payment by my negligence. But a few things that I think Amex should have considered in this situation before they chose to lock down my cards. - I wasn't paying the minimum due, I was paying the adjusted balance, which is basically the most anyone should ever bother paying. I wasn't even close to the minimum. - I wasn't paying on the due date, I was paying 3 days early. Amex wasn't even paid late in this case. Even the retry that succeeded finalized before the payment was even due. - So for 7 days after my payment went through 1 day before it was even due, Amex had my cards on hold for no acceptable reason.
