@bs6054 wrote:
And just as a reminder to those who seem to think Amex can do no wrong:
American Express will reimburse $85 million to about 250,000 customers to resolve accusations that the company violated federal law in its marketing, billing and debt collection practices, the company and the government said Monday.
The multiagency investigation of American Express included the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions. They discovered violations of consumer protection laws between 2003 and this year that started “from the moment a consumer shopped for a card to the moment the consumer got a phone call about long overdue debt,” Richard Cordray, the director of the consumer protection bureau, said in a statement.
To win customers for its Blue Sky travel reward credit card program, the lender sometimes offered customers a misleading promotion. Some customers thought they would receive a $300 reward, but that never materialized, the regulators said.
In doling out credit, they said, American Express also discriminated against applicants based on their age. The company also duped consumers into paying off stale credit card debt with the promise of improving their credit score, the investigators said; in fact, regulators found, American Express was not reporting the payments to the credit bureaus at all.
American Express customers should expect refunds by March 2013, regulators said. The company also agreed to pay $27.5 million in fines to the regulators.
Not exactly totally above board!
Brilliant, my friend, brilliant!
Let's not forget the all-too-real experience of Mr. Kevin J (can I write his last name on the forum?) who was CLD'd by AmEx and in their written ECOA notice stated it was because he swiped his card at a store (an inner-city Wal-Mart, if not mistaken) where people with higher than average default rates also shop.
