Consumer complaint received 2018-05-25
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: MI
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments
Sub-issue: Problem during payment process

Complaint:
On XX/XX/XXXX my grandmother XXXX unexpectedly due to a XXXX XXXX at the same time that her husband, an American Express cardholder, was recovering in the hospital from XXXX XXXX. I was notified and upon receiving the news drove from my location in the Great Lakes region to the Southwest a total distance of around 2000 miles in each direction. I believe that I notified American Express of my travel so that I would not be locked out of either of my American Express charge cards. 

My monthly payment became due on XX/XX/XXXX, however due to my mitigating circumstances I was not able to make the payment on-time. Around XX/XX/XXXX I I received a phone call from American Express inquiring as to why my payment was late. I informed them that Id just lost one grandparent and that the other grandparent was not doing well in the hospital with recovery. I also informed them that because of the way my accounts are set up for ACH transaction between my checking accounts, I wouldnt be able to transfer money for another week and a half, due to the way in which my employer was depositing my compensation over the holiday period. 

The American Express representative informed me that she needed to schedule a payment by XX/XX/XXXX so that my relationship with American Express was not adversely impacted. I told her that the money would not be in my account by that time she was persistent. She cajoled me into authorizing the transactions to maintain my relationship with American Express. I asked the representative whether I would be able to wire a payment to American Express if the payment was returned and whether I would be able to wire additional payments if I faced another emergency situation that took me away from my banking institutions. 

She gave me the bank wire routing number : XXXX. Additionally, she gave me an account number that corresponded to my American Express account. The related address for the bank wire was XXXX XXXX American Express XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX NY XXXX I authorized a wire transfer on XX/XX/XXXX from my brokerage account with XXXX XXXX to the American Express wire account as identified above. Within an hour of authorizing the wire, I was notified by XXXX XXXX that the wire had been processed, and received a subsequent notification from the Department of Treasury that my wire payment had cleared the Federal Reserve. American Express lost the bank wire payment. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I contacted both XXXX XXXX and American Express inquiring the status of the wire. XXXX XXXX again confirmed that the wire transfer had been sent and received by American Express. However, when I contacted American Express, American Express had no record of having received the payment. 

After returning to the Great Lakes region on XX/XX/XXXX, I again called American Express. I inquired about the status of the wire payment. American Express again indicated that they had no record of receiving the wire payment. The call was concluded. I called again a few days later, informed the representative about the situation and my concern. In particular, I asked the representative how this situation would be handled with the bank, since there was a transaction history from XXXX XXXX and the Federal Reserve indicating that American Express had received a wire payment for XX/XX/XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX. 

The representative I spoke with deflected stating that even though American Express lost the payment, my concern should be with the XX/XX/XXXX payment that was now due. I asked the representative how or even why I should be responsible for a XX/XX/XXXX payment, if the bank had already lost my XX/XX/XXXX payment had had not offered to compensate me for the two-thousand dollar loss. It took two additional representatives, all of whom were based in XXXX, to even offer to file an investigation regarding the lost XX/XX/XXXX payment. 

Once I was satisfied that the lost payment was being investigated I remitted the XX/XX/XXXX payment this took place around XX/XX/XXXX in the amount of XXXX. Shortly thereafter, the lost XX/XX/XXXX payment was found but applied retroactively with a data of XX/XX/XXXX, instead of the XX/XX/XXXX. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I paid an additional XXXX dollars to cover the XX/XX/XXXX payment. On XX/XX/XXXX I paid an additional XXXX dollars. On XX/XX/XXXX I paid an additional XXXX dollars. On XX/XX/XXXX I paid an additional XXXX dollars. On XX/XX/XXXX I paid an additional XXXX dollars. Over the sum total of the payments made to my American Express account totaled around XXXX dollars, which was in excess of my minimum payment obligations including both my pay over time and charge balance from the period of XX/XX/XXXX thru XX/XX/XXXX. Yet American Express marked my payments since XX/XX/XXXX as Late. 

In early XX/XX/XXXX American express contacted me indicating that a XX/XX/XXXX payment had been returned and as such my account was under Financial Review. I asked the representative what the impact of the review might be and he stated it could be a downgrade in risk exposure ( line of credit ) and or a cancellation of the card. My risk exposure limit was reduced after the financial review, after Id made a XXXX dollar payment. In this instance the risk exposure limit was lowered beyond the current balance of the card, making the card unusable until I made a subsequent payment. American Express subsequently canceled not only the card referenced here, but my additional elite status card a week later. 

According to American Express own analytics, my monthly spending for the period of XX/XX/XXXX thru XX/XX/XXXX was below the level over the previous year. In fact, it was only around half of the previous year. Furthermore, my six month statement balance was reduced over a six-month period from at the risk exposure limit to approximately five ( 5 ) thousand dollars below the risk exposure limit. Despite this pattern of maintaining my financial obligations and conducting myself in accordance with responsible lending, American Express stated that the reason my accounts had been canceled was because of financial review and the fact that Id been late for ALL months in the past five ( 5 ) consecutive months. When I asked the Representative how the review was conducted and who within the Responsible Lending area had conducted the review, the representative explained to me that the process was conducted by a machine and that no individual had actually reviewed the file. 

Upon being transferred to a Responsible Lending team in XXXX, I was told that unless I agreed to ACH transactions for the XX/XX/XXXX payment, the same system that deemed me to be a risk to American Express for lending was subject to send my accounts for external collection. I inquired about the amount the bank would be trying to collect on the representative couldnt tell me. When I asked why the bank would seek to collect BEFORE considering the outstanding balance to be a loss and charging-off the balance, the representative could not answer. After speaking with a supervisor, the representative returned stating that the process the bank uses to collect funds is at their discretion. 

My payments were in excess of my obligations per my statements from XX/XX/XXXX thru XX/XX/XXXX. Furthermore, my charging history was below what it was for the same period a year prior. And, my average balance for each month from the period of XX/XX/XXXX thru XX/XX/XXXX was below 2000 dollars per month with the exception of XX/XX/XXXX. In fact, my overall spending on the card over the aforementioned period was similar to the spending habits when I first obtained the card nearly four years ago. Yet, American express continued to bill me in excess of 2000 dollars for those particular months. 

American Express Therefore, it would appear that America Express ' back-end analytics target members in a way that maximizes their profit while minimizing their risk exposure by purposely targeting accounts for closure. American Express ' analytics system seems to rely on the assumption that a member with a non-zero pay-over-time balance would be incapable of paying the balance in full at time of cancellation. The scheme appears to be such that if a pay over time balance exists on the account, under any indication of an inability to pay, the analytics system will close the accounts, such that no future charges may be made, but future profits can be made because there exists a nonzero pay-over-time balance on the account. Furthermore, the analytics system also seems to reduce risk exposure limits below a certain amount that makes the card unusalbe immediately after payments have been applied to the account to meet alleged outstanding payment obligations. 

Overall, I lost my grandmother, an American Express card member. At the same time I nearly lost her husband, my grandfather, also an American Express card member for over three decades. The only reason I even have an American Express card is because I saw them with theirs and the presumed success it embodied, and what I thought was a quality banking institution with good customer service. Unfortunately, despite attempting to maintain a good relationship with American Express, I have been penalized for bank transfer errors, payment accounting errors, and insensitive representatives seeking to schedule a payment during a time of grieving and loss. In essence, I got trapped in between accounting irregularities, computer bugs, and poor customer service that is outsourced to XXXX. 

The sad thing is that when I told my grandfather about the experience I had, my grandfathers response was that he, again a card member for decades, had been subject to similar experiences such that while he still has the card, he no longer uses it.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief