Consumer complaint received 2025-12-08 00:00:00
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Closing your account — Company closed your account
Company: AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY
State: NY

Complaint narrative:
I write in connection to the ongoing financial review that Amex has initiated on my accounts. I am a XXXX  and XXXX  as a passion ; my income from XXXX  is minimal and our family relies principally on my husbands income as an XXXX. When I initially signed up for my American Express cards, I provided our family income in accordance with American Express request that I provide income that I could reasonably rely on to pay my bills. Although my husband and I never bothered to join accounts, my husbands income has always been and continues to be the basis of our joint spending and bill payments. Therefore, in accordance with the American Express application instructions and the CARD act of 2009, I provided our full family income on my application. Since then, I have relied on my husbands income to pay my card bills and have not missed any payments. 

When American Express initiated the financial review, I spoke with an American Express representative and requested to upload my husbands bank statements as proof of income, since the income I represented to American Express as requested on my credit card applications was largely his income. After initially denying me, the representative put me on hold and came back saying that I was correct and could provide my husbands bank statements as proof of income. I proceeded to do so. 

The next day, American Express called me and advised that despite the representatives statement from the prior day ( pursuant to which we submitted my husbands confidential and sensitive banking information ), American Express was unwilling to rely on my husbands banking information and needed my personal information alone. Together with my husband, we explained that I did not have a personal checking account that I used to pay my credit cards and solely used my husbands account to make credit card payments. This new representative advised that if I was added now as a joint account holder on my husbands accounts, American Express could rely on the previously provided statements ( notwithstanding that they were from before I was added to the account ) in the financial review. 

We requested a call from a supervisor who advised us a few days later that this second representative was incorrect as well (! ). He explained that there was likely nothing I could do to keep my accounts open since, despite what the American Express card application asks for with respect to income, the financial review was solely about my income and even if I was added to my husbands account, American Express would not rely on that account for the review. 

As you can imagine, these endless calls with conflicting and incorrect information are very frustrating. That is compounded by the obvious inequity of a policy that does not allow a stay-at-home wife or a wife, like me, who earns a minimal income, to rely on her spouses income to hold an American Express card. I file taxes jointly with my husband and we are one family unit ; I can not imagine that it is actually American Expresss policy that I can not report my husbands income on my card applications, and I further can not believe that it is XXXX XXXX policy that this financial review narrowly looks to my personal income. That is both contrary to the CARD act of 2009, the American Express card application instructions and notions of equity and equality across a family unit. 

My American Express accounts will be shut down in a few short days if this is not resolved. I write to urgently appeal to your office in hopes that you in fact do recognize that a wife can and should rely on her husbands income to pay family bills and that such income should be considered in a financial review of my ability to pay my cards in accordance with applicable law and the practical realities of family unit spending.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation