The World According to Mitch

I have been a customer of American Express for six years.  Because it is not my primary credit card (I know, they are a charge card) they have TERRIBLE customer service.  I have paid down my balance every month, but because my average spending on their card is lower, they refuse to let me buy an airline ticket that exceeds a certain amount unless I prepay that amount on my card.  The difference between what they are willing to let me spend in a month and the value of the ticket is not huge – a quarter of the total value of the ticket – but it doesn’t matter.  Oh and by the way, unless I sign up for another service of theirs it will take two days for them to receive my payment, and just proving that I have made the payment is not good enough for them, they actually have to receive the money.

Really Amex, for a company that makes as many billions of dollars a year as you, not to mention the fact that I do close to $50,000 worth of business with you per year, don’t you think that it would be showing a little faith to move just a little?  Show your customers that you DO want their business, and that you are willing to go the extra mile so that they WILL consider making you their primary card?  I guess not.

I am happy to write positive articles when companies surprise me … I seldom bad-mouth companies in this space.  However this time the American Express Centurion has put aside his halyard and shown me the middle finger of his gauntlet.  No problem, I have several other cards to work with… I am very seriously going to reconsider renewing my Amex card next year because frankly I’d rather deal with companies that use common sense.

For the record, if my credit score was in the toilet I would have a much easier time understanding their position… but right now they don’t care about me so I am going to stop caring about them.

Relative to nothing at all, I took this picture of a girl at a Halloween party in Tokyo yesterday.  I thought the good people at American Express Canada would enjoy the picture.  Don’t read too much into it Amex… after all, it’s not about the people (or the panda, or the words written on the panda), it’s only about the numbers on the page.