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Warning - rant follows.

AMEX or American Express is possibly the worst banking institution I have ever had to deal with. I have had a few stupid things happen at various times with various banks and they usually go out of their way to help you out. Not AMEX.

I have had the situation where for the last 2 months my account has been over its limit (largely due to the monthly fees) and I have not had the cash to correct that.

In both instances I made a full explanation to their customer service people (made sure the notes were attached to my account) and advised them I would bring the account bank into working order in the first week of July. In both cases they advised me the minimum amount I would need to pay to make this OK. We are not talking large numbers here. I had to make a minimum payment of 800 or so and they advised me to make a payment of $200 each time. Both times I paid slightly more than they told me to do so. So I naively assumed that everything would be fine when on the 1st of July I made a payment of $2000. (more than $1100 more than the required amount.)

Imagine my surprise when I logged into my account today to check my available credit to see that my credit limit has been dropped $1200 lower without informing me because (and I quote) I had not made the minimum payments for 2 months in 12. Fortunately the $2K was enough to make account good. so the good old customer service people who had previously advised me on what to do never told me this was going to happen, though it should have been clear to them when I told them my plans.

So now they say I have to make a payment of 50% of my outstanding balance so they can reinstate my previous credit limit. I can withdraw the funds immediately if I want. Stupid stupid people. At least I have now got the cash to do it. But its very annoying and has not endeared me to them at all.

Lesson – do not expect AMEX to treat you like a normal person, expect them to have stupid rules that make zero sense. I mean why does paying money into my account and then taking it straight back out again make any difference?

Lesson – do not expect the AMEX customer service people to tell you anything useful without you having to extract it like pulling teeth.

Idiots.

Rant over.

Normal programming will now resume.