Consumer complaint received 2019-08-20
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Fees or interest — Charged too much interest
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY (FL)

Complaint:
Around XX/XX/XXXX, my now husband and I opened an AMEX Gold and Platinum account. We informed the agent who represented AMEX that we were going to use our Gold card to fund our wedding, which would take place later that year. We immediately enrolled both cards into the pay over time feature due to the expenses we would be incurring. The agent informed us that our interest rate would be 19.99%. We began making purchases towards the wedding in XX/XX/XXXX but were faced with a credit line issue on XX/XX/XXXX. Our card was declined for a XXXX   purchase. We immediately contacted AMEX and inquired as to what was the issue as our cards had no limit and a threshold of XXXX before any payments were due. The agent stated that the card should have worked and that the issue was resolved but after we were forced to pay XXXX more towards our previously paid statement. This issue caused our annual Platinum card of XXXX to be due  by XX/XX/XXXX instead of at the end of the year. We inquired as to if this would happen again and we were assured that it would not. However, on XX/XX/XXXX the matter arose again. and we had to pay XXXX in order to gain access to our "limitless" cards. We could not trust the credit card merchant any longer and requested to place both our Gold and Platinum  accounts in a settlement state where we could just pay the balance off over a 36 month time period with no interest. According to the supervisor in the settlements department, XXXX this could not be done and that we needed to pay the balance in full moving forward. We informed the supervisor that we were enrolled in pay overtime. The agent proceeded to say that he would have to investigate our claims and the call was disconnected. We did not hear back from AMEX regarding this matter and continued to pay XXXX towards our cards as we had done so in the past. However, around late XX/XX/XXXX we received a statement that reflected a higher than usual interest rate of 29.99% and not the 19.99% we had been paying before. We immediately contacted AMEX to resolve the issue but to no avail. We closed the accounts and continued to pay the XXXX until XX/XX/XXXX when we were informed that our credit score had been affected due to missed payment. My husband and I have worked extremely hard on our credit and have never missed a payment and wanted to know what was going on. We pulled our credit report and saw that all 3 credit bureaus were notified that we missed our XX/XX/XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX payments to AMEX. We contacted AMEX to inquire why they sent erroneous information to the credit bureaus. The agent for AMEX stated that our account was removed from the pay overtime feature by the supervisor from the previous year. Of course we inquired why was this done without our consent and the agent stated that he would escalate the call. We were escalated to a department that would fix the issue but were met with another agent who stated that she would have a senior manager call back. We were never contacted but instead our Blue account was canceled and from that point everything went wrong. We contacted AMEX disputes, subpoena response team and corporate office to resolve the matter via certified mail. As of date, we were informed that our accounts have been turned over to a collections team.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation