AMEX Centurion completely doo-lally?

Folks

Well, last month I got my Amex card cancelled out of the blue, this month they stopped my card.

Finally they accepted the first time it was a mistake, but it took two weeks for them to tell me that, meantime I couldn't use the card. Not only that, but no-one ever returned three of my calls despite being given clear agreed timeframes. After they didn't respond to a formal written complaint within the time specified in their own complaint procedure I filed the issue with the Financial Ombudsman.

Meantime, this month they tell me it's because I didn't pay on time - although I pointed out to them that for the past seven years I always pay at the same time every month and this was no exception, so what happened this month? Still no answer although at least someone this time had the decency to call me up to say that they have again reinstated my account.

Then the penny dropped. I wonder if, perhaps, they have recently outsourced to India?

H

That is horrendous service,they once stopped my card without telling me,I looked a right prat trying to pay a hotel bill for the whole family and computer said no.I did end up getting my plat fee refunded for that year and the card free for the next year.Will be interested to hear what the Financial Ombudsman says.

[RichardMannion]

Howard,

You're among friends here.... both me and Decker were reminiscing about how crap Centurion are nowadays when it comes to service, and they never fail to be consistently bad, they managed another cock-up of not logging or request for a table in Boston at the weekend.

I've just come to live with the crap service now, the benefits for me and my family are still worth the fee but the service is horrendous. I would liken them to the primate section at London Zoo but that's just unfair to the primates at London Zoo.

15 minute waits to get through to an unhelpful, bone idle person in travel are not uncommon. They always balme the systems or volume of calls, but never do anything proper to remedy it. The alleged Centurion refresh is a joke, I think they are waiting for either Lord Lucan or Shergar to be on hand to do the launch event.

We did ask if they were being deliberately crap to piss off enough members who would go back to Platinum or cancel altogether so that they got back to a sensibly sized cardmember base that they could actually manage correctly but they declined to answer.

Thanks,
Richard

[Pete]

Well, as of last month, I'm now an ex-Centurion cardholder. I could no longer justify the high fee and dwindling benefits.

Astonishing stuff.

Never having held an Amex in my life, I took out the Plat card a few months ago, and am pleased with the associated benefits - but I've not needed to dilly-dally with Customer Services yet!

Originally posted by Howard Long
Folks

Well, last month I got my Amex card cancelled out of the blue, this month they stopped my card.

I wonder if, perhaps, they have recently outsourced to India?

H

Yes, they have, at least for US cardholders of any color, a long time ago. I hate it! I've gone to doing stuff for my account online whenever possible, because I don't want to explain stuff to 3x people who are barely understandable on a call to ???.

The reason your card was shut down was probably a software reason: AMEX has always had a policy (not one they will readily admit to) where a cardholder will have their account shut down if they are late or missing one payment in their first year. This also comes up with switches to new cards (no matter what color to what color, or personal to business). In your case I'd say the comp had a fit.

I'm very interested as to the response you'll get; I am forever getting the preapproved-upgrade to Platinum stuff, and the only thing preventing me from clicking on it are the comments on this site about poor service and lack of attention to issues! I want service for my money, or I'm spending it elsewhere. I'm already torqued about losing my double points for all my spending. If Centurion is such a mess, I think I'll keep my Gold card one more year and see where the chips fall.

Diners is looking pretty good, but I don't want to fly the Dark Side!

Good luck, Howard, and please keep us posted!

Originally posted by vs_itsallgood
The reason your card was shut down was probably a software reason: AMEX has always had a policy (not one they will readily admit to) where a cardholder will have their account shut down if they are late or missing one payment in their first year. This also comes up with switches to new cards (no matter what color to what color, or personal to business).

This might make some sense. Due to a mess up in delevering my original Centurion card several years ago, they re-issued it about half a dozen times before I actually received it. Now each time a card is re-issued it uses up a 'life' on the account and there are only ten lives (one digit). As I only had one life left a couple of months ago, they had to re-start my entire account, and re-issue me with yet another card to reset the 'lives' back to zero. The statement dates are the same on the old and new accounts, but maybe the software thinks I'm a new customer due for a spanking.

Cheers, Howard

[Scrooge]

Maybe you are right.

I went online to pay my bill last month and found that my account had been canceled ! Actually after calling Plat services here in the states they told me it had been canceled for 2 weeks, amazingly I had still managed to run up just over $2k on the damn thing in that time frame.

They could not give me a good answer as to why the system had decided that my account should be canceled, but CS did reinstate it with no argument.