Consumer complaint received 2021-12-18
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: OH
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems
Sub-issue: Problem with customer service

Complaint:
XX/XX/XXXX : I initiated a feature with American Express that they call " Plan It ''. This feature allows you to take larger purchases and set them up on what is essentially a payment plan. It forgoes the normal Credit Card interest rate, instead opting for a flat fee up front and flat fee monthly. I used this on a large {$7400.00} purchase, with a 9 month term. 

XX/XX/XXXX : First statement ( attached as XXXX XXXX ) with this plan in place was issued. 

XX/XX/XXXX : XXXX statement paid, now 8 months/payments remaining on Plan It term XX/XX/XXXX : XXXX statement received ( attached as Statement XXXX ) XX/XX/XXXX : XXXX statement paid, now 7 months remaining on Plan It term XX/XX/XXXX : XXXX statement received ( attached as Statement XXXX ) XX/XX/XXXX : XXXX statement paid, now 6 months remaining on Plan It term XX/XX/XXXX : I contacted customer service via their Android App to inquire about how making additional payments would be handled when the Plan It was in place. I was hopeful that making an extra payment would reduce the monthly amount due for the Plan It. They confirmed it would indeed behave in that fashion. ( Screenshot of this discussion is attached as XXXX ) XX/XX/XXXX : When my card had no other balance, I made an additional {$1000.00} payment in hopes of lowering the monthly Plan It amount due and lower the monthly payment as previously advised as it would help me with my monthly cash flow. I did notice until later, but this actually did not lower my monthly payment, instead it lowered the Plan It to 5 payments/5 months left, ahead of schedule. 

XX/XX/XXXX : Received XXXX statement ( Statement attached as Statement XXXX ) XX/XX/XXXX : Paid XXXX statement, and afterwards realized that the amount due for Plan It did not change, that instead a month had been removed from the term length, but I still had a Plan It payment due with this statement despite my earlier payment. Effectively this moved my final payment date 1 month earlier then expected. 4 payments/months in Pay It term remaining out of 9 total payments, even though only 4 months have passed. 

XX/XX/XXXX : After realizing the above, I contacted customer support again via their desktop website, to try and clear things up. Mentioned that things didn't happen as I expected from what they told me and would rather have the payments lowered with the original term lengths, or my {$1000.00} refunded and the month added back to my Plan It. I was again repeatedly lied to. The first representative told me he looked at the previous chat, and said I was told things that I was not, evidenced by the XX/XX/XXXX screenshot. This then got escalated to a manager who continued to lie to me and told me a month had not been removed from the Plan It, and that the {$1000.00} payment did not go to the Plan It, despite their website and statements clearly stating otherwise. If you look at my XXXX statement at the bottom of page XXXX, it very clearly shows that my payment is {$820.00} per month, and that {$1800.00} was paid towards it in XXXX. I did mis-speak during this interaction thinking that my original final payment was in XXXX, because at the time, I thought my first payment was XXXX. This was inaccurate. As noted above, first payment was in XXXX, so original final payment would be in XXXX, and due to the extra payment current final payment was moved up to XXXX. Customer service said they were willing to refund me the {$1000.00}, but they were not willing to add that balance back to the Plan It or add back the 1 month term to the Plan It even though it had been removed, meaning that {$1000.00} would be due again at my next statement instead of on the Plan It schedule like it was originally. They have effectively moved my due dates forward 1 month, and refuse to put them back to the original dates. 

This full interaction is attached via XXXX screenshots of their desktop website chat client labeled with the date followed by a number XXXX through XXXX which denotes the sequence they happened. Everywhere possible, I tried to leave some overlap of the messages so that you could match them up and follow the sequence to ensure nothing was left out. These screenshots are in the attached XXXX file. 

Additional Notes : I've searched the various Plan It documents and the AmEx website, and how extra payments does not seem to be detailed officially anywhere. I find the fact that they don't disclose this while customer service is actively lying about it, and then moving your due dates forward to be dishonest, immoral, and predatory.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief