Posted: 3/9/2005 7:17:14 AM EDT
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Thought you guys might find this entertaining. I've been a member of American Express since 1979 with never a late bill. I've always got outstanding customer service and when I contested a charge it was instantly taken care of always in my favor. When I started my own business, I decided to open multiple accounts so I could both have a revolving credit line and keep my home finances separate from my business. Well they go mixed last month as my wife put her bill in my in box and I pay mine on line so she missed the January payment. We don't catch it until the Feb bill comes in and immediately send via mail a double payment. Meanwhile I get a phone call that I am on credit hold until the bill is paid, check is literaly in the mail at this point. I then go online and find the interest rates on two of the three cards had been changed from 9.9% to 27% and thousands cut from my credit limit. WTF! I call them up today and it kind of goes like this. Girl one! "You missed a payment!" Me: "This is what happened!(I tell her) Doesn't my 25 years of on time record count for anything!" Girl one! "Its a computer automatic at this many days. I can't do a thing!" Me: "Well, who can?" Girl "Hold." Girl2 Same line as girl one. Me Same line as with girl one except now I add "I won't wait 6 months and will cancel all my cards." Girl2 "Hold" Now I get the manager. Manager: "Wow, you have a long good record. The late payment will be dropped and your cards restored to their previous levels." Me: "Thanks! How about this other card?" Manager: "Different customer service, I will explain to the other manager, please hold." Manager 2: "Fixed Mr. Tj. Have a nice day." Now I set here scratching my head after over 1.5 hours on the phone wondering when it happened to us that now computers make the decisions and people are no longer allowed to think but do as a computer tells them. It was so obvious that once I got to someone who was empowered to think that they immediately saw that my threat to pull my business was not a threat nor had I been dealt with justly. Still it took me three people and 1.5 hours before someone with a brain could do something to keep from losing a 25 year plus customer that does over $20,000 annual business. Damn the world sure has gotten strange! Tj |
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I dropped Amex for similar reasons. I had a gold card in the mid 1990s, with what I assume was a pretty decent credit line. I didn't use it often, but was really pissed off when I was declined when I try to pay for a $300 purchase. WTF? Any one of my cheap visa credit cards would have been approved, but a $300 payment was denied for a gold card? Their excuse when I yelled at them later was that they were trying to protect me since I hadn't used the card in a while. Morons. What I am supposed to do - call them an get "permission" every time I want to use their card? I eventually cancelled the card after that. 
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What the purposely failed to tell you is that they programmed the computers to do raise rates & penalize people for being even a day late. It's not the computer's fault, it's corporate policy. They've simply created another revenue stream or "profit center". Nothing unethical about it necessarily, it's just piss poor customer service. B of A did that to me with a Visa. It's been paid off and the credit line will close. |
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The reason computer make these decisions: 1) Most of the time, it requires no conscious thought. The computer carries out the policy exactly as it was formulated. 2) Sometime, cases like yours arise because of case 1, and the company was hoping you would go along with it: "We missed a payment. Dang." When a customer complains, as you did, they can fall back on the computer program as a first excuse. However, the computer was only executing corporate defined guidelines. 3) Your exact case was not considered when the corporation developed its guidelines, and the computer program will be updated to take similar cases into account, i.e. for 10+ year reliable customers, billing will be reviewed by a customer service agent before interest rates and/or credit lines are adjusted. 4) Computers work WAY cheaper than people. We all want everything at low cost, so copmpanies computerize whatever they can. Real customer service people, especially WELL TRAINED ones, are quite expensive, and take a long time to train. |
Good luck! Applying for a home equity loan once, I go to the bank and find a 1% increase in the quoted interest rate on the loan papers. I ask "Why?". "Well Mr. Tj, you have an open line of credit for over $250,000." Needless to say, I'm spellbound and have no earthly idea why I would have so much open credit. I tell the bank to kiss my ass since they quoted one rate and then didn't expect me to read the loan paper then try to find out how I suddenly got rich. Turns out that every credit card that I had ever cancelled kept the line of credit open in case I wanted to come back. It was a bitch to straighten out since some of them were cards I never ever applied for nor used. Apparently those pre-approved and cards sent to you in the mail count as open credit. Now I have it down to an art. First pay the card off, then have the credit limit lowered to $1, then cancel the card. Tj |
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I've never had anything but problems dealing with Credit Card companies, and I have an intense hatred of them (not because I've never been able to pay the bill, but because they have always treated me like shit). It seems to me like the longer you stay with a company, the worse they treat you. That's why I change credit card companies every couple years. I only keep one, but I wish I could just get rid of it and never use them again. Unfortunately, these days you cannot get by without one, especially if you travel. 
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It drives me crazy when I get a replacement card with a new expiration date on VISAs that I haven't used, asked for, etc. !!!! I am starting to wonder how long it will be before congress bitch slaps this industry. Not that I am for regulation, but you have to admit they are asking for it. G23c |