Consumer complaint received 2015-12-01
Product: Credit card — 
Issue: Other — 
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY (CA)

American express has/had a closing date of around the XXXX of each month on our card. Then they tell us to pay on r about the XXXX of each month, which means even if you received your bill on the closing date, which is impossible by mail, you have essentially only 14 days to pay your bill and then as you near the end if the 14 days they hound you, and after that they email you that they will report you to a credit agency and you are past due, even when you have a valid dispute with them. In our case we were disputing an unauthorized charge that the executive office said was nit our responsibility as well as a cyber fraud running balance that began with {$260.00} in XX/XX/XXXX and ended with {$1700.00} -- none of these charges were ever listed as line item charges,, they were onky included in a growing balance that we disputed and asked for explanation. Amex said its attorney investigated it twice, but I am an attorney and I never received any evidence of this, never an explanation other than, 'You are wrong. All you want is your way. You are not paying your bills on time, '' All of this was untrue as we ran a spread sheet each month and paid all actual charges we charged in full. Then last month the day before their please pay in full by date and coincidentally the day we paid even more than they stated we owed them, American Express abruptly closed our account blocking us from receiving our earned points in their reward program. They would not reinstate us and said we had a bad payment record, which was false, and also a poor FICO score, which was false as I checked both that day and both were very good, with all charges, bills, etc. paid on time. We never said we would not pay Amex, we only wanted proof of charges and for them to not pay a bill we told them not to pay. But as an act of good faith we did pay the full dispute and even changed our scheduled payment to an earlier date, way before the closing date. Besides the above, every sixty days Amex would remove the dispute causing us to have to reinstate it and ask for explanation -- and then they started no paying charges we authorized, and sent chargebacks to XXXX merchant for charges never out on our account in the first place. There was also confusing data entries as to XXXX merchant where I could not tell if the charge was from them, where I had to call them and ask and then dispute, and then a month or so later the data entry was changed -- none of these errors ( if that is what they were ) mattered to Amex. I was sent so many emails this last month I had to tell them to CEASE AND DESIST -- and the mail and repeated sending of the monthly billings over and over again as well as the many, many form letters all saying the same thing, never addressed our questions. And to top it off the action of closing our account was retaliatory because we complained to this office. Now all they do is ignore me. When I was paying this last bill it took me 12 hours on the phone just to pay the bill because they kept transferring me from department to department, treating me like I was a criminal. We have been a XXXX XXXX customer since XX/XX/XXXX, and the dispute process was something I believed in with Amex. The work involved to just remove the auto payments and get everyone paid has taken huge amounts of time. And the thing that really gets me is the finally payment and these payments of over XXXX XXXX dollars mean I should also have the benefit of the rewards earned by the payment, as well as the final payment I should be paying as soon as all the ending charges are posted, but of course, prior to the closing date -- which happens to be 30 days from the prior closing date -- no grace period -- I now feel bullied by Amex and the least they could do would be to post a true and actual due date and not float everyone 's money. My bank laughed when and said this is why they no longer offer Amex.