Consumer complaint received 2017-09-26
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: AZ
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Closing your account
Sub-issue: Company closed your account

Complaint:
For a long period of time, I have used my amex cards for general purposes. this included purchases of services and goods. Sometimes, it also included using such services as XXXX by XXXX and XXXX. Nobody ever contacted me suggesting me that such was wrong. In fact, both XXXX and XXXX allow for the use of Amex without any restrictions. 

Of late, I made a number of XXXX transactions to pay employees of our company XXXX XXXXt XXXX. this was done without issue, and I often used Amex as my source. I did more of these transactions last week. On Sunday, with no notice, Amex cancelled my card. I called to find out what was happening and I spoke to a number of different reps. Before speaking to the main rep in charge, it was made clear to me that the reason for this was my use of XXXX, as amex said that it was prohibited under the Cardholder agreement. I looked at the Agreement, which I have included, and there is no such prohibition. 

Today, I spoke to rep XXXX XXXX, id XXXX. She confirmed that the accounts were shut down because of my use of XXXX. She specifically stated that it was because I used it to XXXX on two transactions, one to XXXX XXXX and XXXX XXXX. XXXX is my daughter. She is also an employee, and any transactions made in favor of XXXX were in the context of her as an employee. I can provide absolute proof of her status upon request. With respect to XXXX, that was n't for business purposes. Rather, it was to facilitate a purchase that she was making. 

After these items were explained to XXXX, she advised that I also had certain payments that were returned. That was correct ( and I actually advised her of this in advance ). They were from a business account, where someone failed to transfer money in a timely fashion. All of those items immediately cleared thereafter. After that was explained to XXXX, she advised that I had a couple of returned items on my blue card. I explained to her that I had attempted to change payment banks on that, and when the switch was made ( i no longer use the first account ) that issue went away. Then XXXX looked back to XXXX and said that part of the reason related to the return in XXXX. Amex already improperly cancelled me for this and I was reinstated, so it is far from good faith for them to raise the issue now. 

I will note that when I spoke to a person last evening prior to speaking to XXXX, he was very clear as to the issue i.e. the XXXX and stated that he understood my position, which should result in the return of the card. 

I circled back at the end of the call. XXXX reiterated that the reason and only reason that the card was cancelled was because of the XXXX use. With respect to XXXX, there is no basis at all for amex to even have an argument. With XXXX, before Amex goes about closing an account, maybe they should address the issue in their own contract documents. And maybe they could have made a courtesy call to me.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation