Consumer complaint received 2020-07-25
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: FL
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Incorrect information on your report
Sub-issue: Account status incorrect

Complaint:
In short, aside from the additional details included in my attachment. I am not late, have never been late or past due on this account, bill and all negatively reported information needs to be removed from my credit bureau reports. I have explained in great detail what has occurred and I have more than sufficient documentation to support everything that I have said and I am taking action .... all actions began with first contacting and trying to work together with American Express, and the fact that this could potentially grow into something bigger is due to the blatant disregard American Express has shown in dismissing me and not honoring many requests made to work things out amicable and reasonably for everyone involved. 

American Express has charged illegal late fees, penalty interest, canceled payments overtime XXXX installment pay ), meanwhile accelerating and increasing " on-demand '' a higher balance than what was normally/historically due. In other words, a {$35.00} minimum payment with an added unauthorized and non-refunded ( or credited back ) annual membership fee of {$550.00} would instead be reflected as {$580.00} and when that {$550.00} was later disputed in writing, American Express still attempted to collect on the amount in question despite the fact that written notification of the disputed amount was made within 60-days, plus this was still reported to the credit bureaus ... .all of which is spelled out in their billing statements and still American Express continued to bill collect against this amount, etc ... add additional late fees, trigger penalty interest, etc .... eventually accelerating payments as high as over $ XXXX and continuing to report to the credit bureaus and continue to threaten reports of 30+, 60+ and more. All of this is an attempt to XXXX as further explained in the attachment ) disproportionately skew the remaining balance, so that it can appear to be a higher amount due that what the typical amount should be, which is being paid regularly without any missed dates, and therefore nothing is late, past due or delinquent at all. 

American Express incessantly calls me and no matter how many times I make " Do Not Call '' written requests, I am ignored. American Express has a habitual pattern of not honoring explicitly expressed wishes and does whatever it is that American Express would otherwise prefer to the contrary. This was the case with the annual membership fees each year, from the first one charged in XXXX when asked to pro-rate the charge and they refused and they were asked to cancel and was informed on the spot that I revoked any authorization to ever charge me again an annual membership fee. Despite making my wishes clear, American Express continued to leave the account open and active, billing in each year in excess of my regular {$35.00} minimum payment to add on additional annual membership fees and increasing the sum from {$450.00} in XXXX to {$550.00} in XXXX, XXXX ( collecting in full before I caught on and stopped this action ) and again in XXXX, except this time I caught it in time to update my account to a fixed {$35.00} payment for them not to exceed. 

Even with filing for Financial Hardship, a program to prevent reports to the credit bureaus and set up payment arrangements, which would further enable paying overtime, American Express did not honor my request to take part in this program, even though I qualify and expressed how ill I was especially at the time, following numerous attempts to call and discuss the same by phone, and eventually postal mail, and never-ending emails that got me nowhere, even though I was in regular communications with an agent in the executive customer services team. They basically dropped any and all so-called " investigating '' once they/American Express learned that I had filed complaints with the XXXX  and CFPB. 

I do not have to tell anyone at the CFPB about the established history of violations that American Express has been both accused of and found to be complicit in numerous unscrupulous schemes of treachery and other fraud. The CFPB has knowledge as best as just about any other entity of many of these wrongdoings and this is no different, other than I am an individual who is standing alone at this time pleading my case. My case is one that I will continue to plead and escalate until it gets the attention and investigation that is required into uncovering what I am sure is just the tip of what is just a drop in the bucket. I doubt this is any single stand-alone case, whether or not that is the case, I know what my case is and I am prepared to prove it and support every last claim, I promise that the longer I continue to best tested to this extreme, that is the measure of redress that I will seek and more in making this right, in the end. I will not rest until amends are made either directly with and through American Express or by continuing to uncover every deceitful act of deliberate restructuring and distorting the truth to paint a false picture of what they/American Express claims to be a reality when it is nothing more than just another falsehood and misrepresentation to cover up the truth.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation