Consumer complaint received 2018-11-12
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose prepaid card
Issue: Trouble using the card — Problem adding money
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY (OR)

I have five XXXX XXXX  cards with American Express Serve. They provide the ability to load funds via a debit card on their website, which I have used without issue in the past. However, I recently logged into each account to update my debit card linked to these Serve accounts ( I have the same debit card linked to each Serve account ), which is when the trouble began. 

Some time last week ( XX/XX/XXXX or XX/XX/XXXX? ), I noticed that I was unable to sign on to the Serve website for any of my five cards. It indicated my password was incorrect, even though I was certain I was entering the correct information. When I selected to reset my password by sending a verification e-mail, I received a confusing " For your safety, your session has expired after 10 minutes of inactivity. Please try again. '' message. When I selected the other option to verify using my Security Question, I receive an equally unhelpful message - " We're sorry, something went wrong! Please try again. '' I finally got around to calling on XX/XX/XXXX and was told that my accounts were locked because of the recently updated debit card. Despite the online verification process when adding the card ( Serve places two pending  charges and asks you to verify the amount ) they said they needed to verify that the card was mine. This required them contacting my credit union and having me authorize my credit union to confirm that the card provided was in my name, the address matched, etc. 

After this was done, the representative unlocked my accounts and said all of my accounts were unlocked. I verified I was able to sign on to all of my accounts while he was still on the phone. However, after I went to update my debit card on the last Serve card ( I had only updated four out of five when this happened ) and tested to verify that I could load funds from the debit card, I found that all of my Serve accounts were once again locked! 

I called back and basically received the same scripted response, that all of my accounts were locked because of the recently updated debit card. And on top of that, this new representative said he would need to go through the same process of conferencing in my credit union to verify the card was mine! I expressed my frustration with doing the same thing over again, but ultimately agreed to contact the credit again. After this was completed, my accounts were all unlocked. 

Well, sure enough, after attempting to load funds on my card, all of my Serve cards were once again locked! I called today (XX/XX/XXXX ) and the representative reviewed one of the cards and unlocked it. However, when I indicated that the other four cards were locked, she suddenly provided the the same scripted response as the previous reps - all accounts locked, need to contact your credit union to verify. Which they can not do today because my credit union is closed due to a holiday. 

I have called back several times in an attempt to get this resolved but continue to run into the same ridiculous request to complete a verification process that has already been completed twice. Requests to speak to a supervisor are met with being placed on hold for twenty minutes and then either being hung up on or told a supervisor is unavailable. When I ask to have a supervisor call me back, they state they can not make outgoing calls. When I asked for an email address, I was told they can only send e-mails, not receive them. The only way to contact them outside the phone number is by U.S. mail. 

I find it amazing that a company as large and well-known as American Express has such inane policies and deceitful and/or incompetent customer service for something as simple as updating debit card.