I've always had great service from Amex with one exception, when I called to cancel the credit monitoring service. The lady I spoke with during that call was not friendly, not knowledgeable and just not very good at customer service. That was the only time I ever felt like I got less than stellar service from anyone at Amex ever. I have 4 personal cards, one of which is a charge. Never an issue with anything on any card with any rep.
I've had mixed results with the Chase Amazon Visa service, some people have been great, others sort of surly and unhelpful, but the JPMorgan Chase service has been great the two times I've called.
HSBC has been great for the store card, and mediocre for the Reward Zone card, and Capital One was never ever very good. I ended up closing that card out of frustration and even that took me three different calls to three different people in all parts of the world and several weeks to accomplish. Not too keen on having any future cards with them.
Had only one experience with BofA, and it was good. Their website, not so great, but the person on the phone was great. Very friendly.
Having worked in customer service for a number of different places over the years, I think it's unfair to make a blanket statement that "customer service people just aren't trained well" or "if I have a low end whatever, I get treated like crap." While some places are better than others, and some people are trained better than others, I can tell you with the most sincerity that I've never treated anyone poorly because I thought they were lower class than me or than others, and I don't think that the majority of customer service reps would behave that way either. It's a hard job, made even more difficult in places where the rules change a lot or communication isn't great, or employees aren't treated well.
My advice would be that if you feel you aren't being treated with respect, do the following two things in this order: ask yourself if you're treating the person you're speaking to with respect, and if the answer is "yes" and you still feel you're being disrespected, call back and talk to someone else. I've never worked anywhere that employed an entire fleet of unskilled reps, and as in any profession, some people are just more skilled at their job than others.
As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
Starting Score: 648
