My Letter To American Express

In my last post, I shared with you my unpleasant experience with American’s Express’s “Financial Review” process. Here is the letter I will be sending to them:

My Letter To American Express

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Dear Sir/Madame,

On December 3d, 2008, I received a call from Mr. Chris xxxxx with the financial review team. The call was extremely difficult to hear, both due to the poor connection as well as the heavily accented language of Mr. xxxxx. Frankly, it seemed more like a fraudulent attempt to obtain personal information than a legitimate communication from American Express. I was then startled to find out that my American Express accounts had been abruptly suspended.

I hold multiple American Express Cards, and was recently approved for additional cards that I will be using for business and travel expenses. As I am sure your records will confirm, I have always paid my balances in full and on time.

The actions by American Express were outrageous on many levels:

1. All of my credit cards were suspended without notice. Had I been out of town or out of the country, this would have been a major inconvenience and possibly a crisis.

2. Although I faxed the requested forms to American Express promptly, it took several weeks to restore my accounts. My original fax on December 5th contained my wife’s social security number, but not her name. Several days later, I was told of the error, and that only I could correct it. I re-faxed the form on the 9th. It then took two weeks, and another call to Mr. xxxxx to follow up, for my accounts to be restored.

3. Due to this issue, I was unable to achieve the $30,000 in annual spending necessary on my Starwood American Express card to be awarded Starwood Gold Status for 2009. This is a very valuable elite status, and one of the very reasons that I have been an active user of my Starwood card.

4. Throughout this entire ordeal, I kept receiving marketing material encouraging me to activate and use my American Express cards. It was as if American Express was mocking me.

I recently applied for and received cards for business and travel. It was shortly after that, that my accounts were suspended. If American Express did not want to extent me those cards, then they should have just denied them rather than approve them and suspend all of my accounts. I have been a loyal card holder who has consistently kept my obligations to American Express. I no longer feel that American Express can be trusted to uphold theirs.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Sincerely,

Jason D. Steele
Credit Blogger for AskMrCreditCard.com