Consumer complaint received 2021-01-25
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: WA
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:
AMEX account ending XXXX I am writing this to document anything prior to collection activities or legal action by this company. 

I realize AMEX is huge. So big that they feel they can do whatever they want and have lost any connection to caring what the effect of their actions are on real people. So big they have an army of reps trained to create a firewall between their customers and any real human being on the other end. A legal department who plays the same games I used to play ... when I had a job and a career before this disaster. They write cardholder agreements 100 % in their favor, as I did writing contracts. With garbage clauses similar to " it's up to our sole discretion to increase a card limit to ... whatever the heck we feel it should be. '' Blurring the line between whether they operate as a bank or a credit card company, but more aptly more like loan sharks. There is no real card limit, their useless response to that complaint I made was " we don't want our customers to be embarrassed '' by a declined card. That's cute. It should be " we make money off putting people in hock then we sue them or ruin their reputation if they don't pay up. '' The only relevant phone call they ever made to me after this disaster was from their fraud department asking " how much money do you make? '' Apparently their security department or fraud department ... had no earthly idea until I told them. Upon learning I made XXXX a year and evidently I had decided out of the blue after five years of a low balance payed off always with no late or missed payments ... I just up and thought it would be fun to blow 1/3 of my yearly income in 36 hours. This is prima facia evidence of, at the very least, security incompetence or intentional disregard because they profit from ignorance. 

The frustration of dealing with a company that operates this way, too big for it's own good, can drive a person insane. It drove me insane. Canned scripts. Low level employees with no authority to speak with any useful responses who pass you around from person to person until you just give up while the decision makers hide behind the scenes. To put it simply, they know you can't fight them, so they don't give a XXXX. You simply do not matter to them. 

My life has been destroyed. In a large part because of this company. They have the documentation. They have my statements. I have spent a year and a half going back and forth with them, naively believing if I just provided one more document, one more police report, one more piece of evidence that I am telling the truth, one more phone call to explain what happened, that it would make any difference. I wasted over a year. Fighting a company who investigates ... themselves. The deck is stacked, there is no way to win. The only way to stop fraud is by robust security measures. Their security measures are XXXX. If my wife, with police in my home, calls them and tells them to cancel a card, security and safety demand they cancel the card. But instead I have spent countless hours on the phone with them trying to " prove my case '' in a non existent court of law. They blew it. But they will never admit it, because putting people in hopeless debt is the way they make the biggest profits. 

There was never any way I could win. Whether the police caught the scammers, whether the police tied it the merchants, whether I had them on tape, whether the scammers threatened my life, it doesn't matter because they couldn't pay AMEX. There was no money in finding the truth, therefore to their fraud or security, caring about that was a complete waste of their time. AMEX is in the business of profits. There is nothing wrong with that. But they couldn't give a hoot when someone is XXXX, scammed, or even when tons of evidence point directly to criminal activity, so long as they can't recover their losses. 

I gave them evidence of the fraud. How it works, what happened, how the merchant committed a felony crime, on tape. They don't care. Their goal is to push the liability onto the victim and pay the criminal. Because the criminal operating the scheme ... makes money for them. Period. The victim, broke and ruined, makes no money for them. Whether the cops caught them ... who cares. So there are more victims ... but AMEX doesn't care. Those victims are profit. A lot of profit, especially flowing through the criminal enterprises in XXXX who sent out people to run the scam. It's not up to AMEX to stop paying crooks, that's " up to law enforcement. '' Law enforcement makes it a low priority ... because the criminals always get paid off. The only time AMEX defended itself was when the money was over XXXX because these crooks scammed a business account card. Look up the case AMEX. You won, which enraged the creep on tape who threatened me. 

I'm not going to play games with AMEX anymore. My life is destroyed. After this scam and endless calls to AMEX, I became XXXX and XXXX. I drank myself to death. I was threatened by these XXXX  claiming they were outside my home. The police were called. The office heard them, a " threat to life '' report was filed. These " merchants '' are not people who behave like a business. They behave like the mob. 

In abject frustration, I called AMEX demanding to speak to anyone with any authority. I mistakenly said " I'm gon na XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  if you can't put someone on the phone who can talk about this '' and hung up in total frustration. An hour later police were AT MY HOME, embarrassing me to other residents and my wife, who this creep tried to blackmail by threatening to send tapes to her ... to my home. Police showed up at my lunch, 8 of them, and took me to a mental facility where I spent 7 days in a hospital gown ... coloring with crayons and proving I wasn't crazy. I lost my job a week later. A XXXX year career in XXXX XXXX XXXX ... down the toilet. 

And ... .I 'm still paying AMEX. With no money, no job, and a XXXX career. I worked at XXXX for five years. Within four months of this XXXX, I was fired, I wrecked my car, I went nuts, and AMEX sent me to a place where I was coloring with crayons instead of managing a global contract department. Look at my XXXX profile. 500 contacts, 15 years in the industry ... fired at EXACTLY THE SAME TIME AMEX sent me to a looney bin. Because I was XXXX  by these people sent out to bring targets into these places. THAT '' S HOW THE SCAM WORKS.

This all could have been prevented if AMEX had listened to my wife, She called BEFORE THIS XXXX  HAPPENED. Warning the company things were not right, that I was potentially in danger because I don't engage in these kind of activities. She wouldn't have called the police otherwise. But AMEX ignored the warning. The simple act of issuing a new card, the " inconvenience '' of three to five business days over a piece of plastic, cost me being XXXX, scammed, and no memory of it. 

I am XXXX. IT '' S ON THE COMMITMENT PAPERS GIEVN TO AMEX ... WHO GOT ME COMMITTTED. I take 6 prescriptions meds a day. When they dosed me with XXXX  or XXXX or whatever, it triggered a XXXX XXXX XXXX. I don't remember being there. I had to look up where they took me ... based on d/b/a names, not the legal names on the charges. It doesn't matter anyway, because NOBODY SPENDS XXXX DOLLARS IN 36 HOURS, BY THEMSELVES, ON A MONDAY NIGHT, MAKING XXXX A YEAR. 

It's preposterous. Any credit card company ( I have a perfect payment record even today ) smells fraud. AND AMEX WAS TOLD DIRECTLY SOMETHING WAS WRONG. AMEX reversed charges the criminals made to buy goods online SENT TO THE SCAMMERS HOME ADDRESS, with information they lifted from the business. 

AMEX didn't listen. And now they want to pretend they were not warned. When I called and asked them why the card was not cancelled after I came out of that XXXX  state and got home in my own car ( I never drove to these places the people sent to these sports bars, etc drove me there ), the rep said we can't stop a card for security when " a friend calls to warn us. '' That's how ridiculous it is. They don't even know who called them. Because they ignored it. 

I'm sure their legal department will pick this apart to shift liability back and poke holes in my " case. '' Forget them. This was about a life, which I no longer have.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation