Is American Express for real?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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I think one of my points is why does a guy like this still have a job with American Express? If I owned the company (or am the CEO), this guy is fired in two seconds. That rep not only hung up the chat on me, but also proved that they had no idea what they're talking about, AND they weren't pleasant to deal with. 

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I'm not really sure it's fair to make that judgement.  What if the employee wasn't properly trained?  Maybe training is supposed to be X and he only received one third X.  Do you still fault him in that case?  Should he be held accountable if he wasn't taught properly, or should the people that are supposed to ensure he is properly trained be held accountable.  If it's those people, should they be fired in two seconds? 

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Not being trained properly is a poor excuse. As another poster has said, AMEX workers get 3 months of training before they're allowed to take phone calls, etc. 

Besides, if you feel like you aren't trained correctly, why not ask for more training? Why not ask a supervisor if you have a question instead of looking like a doofus in front of a potential customer? 

It's also not AMEX's responsibility to teach the rep how to act like a grown up. 

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Hey pot, kettle is calling, they are on line one.

[galahad15]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Citi's customer service is God awful. 

One time I had a payment returned from Discover due to bank error, and I was on the phone with someone who spoke English and acted like they have a brain, and then we did a three way call to fix this thing and of course, like always, there's someone from India with 1/4 of a brain who picks up from Citi. Myself and the Discover rep almost wanted to just laugh because then it hit me how much better Discover's customer service is superior to Citi's. 

If I ran a business the customer would always be #1. Shareholders are always happier when their company can be trusted by their customers because customers who are treated well remain loyal... Trust me I'm a shareholder, just not in bank stock. We want customers to stay so profits don't dip and the share price winds up falling. It's harder to win back customers you've burnt than to find new customers. Do you know how to really keep your customers happy? Don't outsource you customer service to any other country but Canada. 

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The reason I rated Citi higher than Discover is b/c Citi offers the SP CLI increase if you have the luv button displayed every 6 months (which has given me significant CLIs over the past 2 years), plus I have had successes in having them lower my APR.  I'm not sure if Discover allows periodic or regular SP CLIs the same way as Citi -- so far, Discover has only granted one automatic CLI for me within the past 10 years of having them, and they always say that they will need a HP whenever I hit the luv button on their website.  Plus, Discover RJ'd me not just once but multiple times and without any late payments or baddies at all, before I was finally after many months able to negotiate the APR back down to a more reasonable level, that ultimately was still 2x as high as the APR I had with them before the first RJ.

So if by customer service you mean the availability of SP CLIs and refraining from repeated, unmerited RJs as a metric, then yes I would probably prefer Citi, and Discover will most likely never be my favorite card.  YMMV, based on the customer service metric being measured, and by individual experiences of various card members.

ETA:  plus, while both Citi and Discover have sent me mutliple 0% APR promo offers over the years, I have received many more offers as far as I can recall from Citi, rather than Discover.

[someg33k]

I cant say every contact with them has been stellar.  My overall experience with them has been quite positive though.

Where I have noticed poor service is when I call or chat in the evenings. So i limit my contact with them during daytime hours

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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 If I ran a business the customer would always be #1. Shareholders are always happier when their company can be trusted by their customers because customers who are treated well remain loyal... Trust me I'm a shareholder, just not in bank stock. We want customers to stay so profits don't dip and the share price winds up falling. It's harder to win back customers you've burnt than to find new customers. Do you know how to really keep your customers happy? Don't outsource you customer service to any other country but Canada. 

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That is a vast oversimplifcation.   Shareholders mainly focus on profits (and thus potential growth) and in many highly competitive but "essential" areas, having cheap if potentially less-than-stellar customer service will win every time, which is precisely why some many companies do offshore  (if it was so obviously a bad move perhaps they wouldn't).    In addition, customer service can be a very small part of the service/product offering, in some cases if a customer needs to call customer service, the relationship is in danger anyway, so money spent there may not be worthwhile.    And outside of credit card forums, I would bet most calls to issuers are relatively templated (what is this charge, when is my payment due) rather than questions about if a CLI is an HP/SP, APR reductions etc.

As my new CIO is fond of pointing out, Amazon DOES have a toll-free number for customer support, but very few people would even think of looking for it to call

[wasCB14]

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@galahad15 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Citi's customer service is God awful. 

One time I had a payment returned from Discover due to bank error, and I was on the phone with someone who spoke English and acted like they have a brain, and then we did a three way call to fix this thing and of course, like always, there's someone from India with 1/4 of a brain who picks up from Citi. Myself and the Discover rep almost wanted to just laugh because then it hit me how much better Discover's customer service is superior to Citi's. 

If I ran a business the customer would always be #1. Shareholders are always happier when their company can be trusted by their customers because customers who are treated well remain loyal... Trust me I'm a shareholder, just not in bank stock. We want customers to stay so profits don't dip and the share price winds up falling. It's harder to win back customers you've burnt than to find new customers. Do you know how to really keep your customers happy? Don't outsource you customer service to any other country but Canada. 

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The reason I rated Citi higher than Discover is b/c Citi offers the SP CLI increase if you have the luv button displayed every 6 months (which has given me significant CLIs over the past 2 years), plus I have had successes in having them lower my APR.  I'm not sure if Discover allows periodic or regular SP CLIs the same way as Citi -- so far, Discover has only granted one automatic CLI for me within the past 10 years of having them, and they always say that they will need a HP whenever I hit the luv button on their website.  Plus, Discover RJ'd me not just once but multiple times and without any late payments or baddies at all, before I was finally after many months able to negotiate the APR back down to a more reasonable level, that ultimately was still 2x as high as the APR I had with them before the first RJ.

So if by customer service you mean the availability of SP CLIs and refraining from repeated, unmerited RJs as a metric, then yes I would probably prefer Citi, and Discover will most likely never be my favorite card.  YMMV, based on the customer service metric being measured, and by individual experiences of various card members.

ETA:  plus, while both Citi and Discover have sent me mutliple 0% APR promo offers over the years, I have received many more offers as far as I can recall from Citi, rather than Discover.

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To me, credit standards are a separate matter from customer service. My Citi CS complaints revolve more around CSRs who don't know what they are talking about and long wait times to talk to the benefits department.

[negg]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

You literally have to be kidding me, lol. 

I thought American Express had great customer service. I guess I was wrong, no wonder Discover overtook them. 

A chat from a few minutes ago on the next post. 

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Discover overtook but Amex is still a close 2nd right?    So yes, your chat isn't great, but you can find much worse examples for every issuer, and the point of surveys like JD Power is to get big samples to look at overall performance.     This just sounds like terminology, CSR didn't understand what you meant by pre-qualify page (and he/she should have asked rather than telling you there wasn't one.)   But at least, as far as we know, they didn't open 5 accounts for you without your knowledge as WF might have done!

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If a customer service rep doesn't understand what a pre-qualification page is, then why are they even working there? I mean it's the most basic thing they should know... How can you trust this particular person to solve more difficult problems? 

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What ??  The CSR does understand what a pre Q is. You stated you couldn't find the pre Q page, he informed you they don't have a pre Q page or site.  What are you looking for ?  Granted he hung up on which is wrong. But he did answer both your questions. 

[Anonymous]

In my experience, most credit card customer service has not been that great, I recently moved and called all 5 credit card companies I have a card with, I know I can do an address change online, but I did not have internet set up for a few more days after this, so calling was what I resorted to. It is not a particularly different address, however only 1 credit card company correctly changed the address. I even verified with them and told them the address more than once, even so, American Express, Blispay, Barclay, and Citi all got it wrong. Discover was the only one to get it correct. So, I can concur, I have had the best experience with Discover, however I probably use their card the least, next to Barclay. I've had my worst experiences with Citi support, ironically, my most used card.

TL;DR, in my experience, credit card phone support (and with Citi even online support) has not generally been very good, with the exception of Discover who has yet to mess up with me.

[Anonymous]

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@galahad15 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

Citi's customer service is God awful. 

One time I had a payment returned from Discover due to bank error, and I was on the phone with someone who spoke English and acted like they have a brain, and then we did a three way call to fix this thing and of course, like always, there's someone from India with 1/4 of a brain who picks up from Citi. Myself and the Discover rep almost wanted to just laugh because then it hit me how much better Discover's customer service is superior to Citi's. 

If I ran a business the customer would always be #1. Shareholders are always happier when their company can be trusted by their customers because customers who are treated well remain loyal... Trust me I'm a shareholder, just not in bank stock. We want customers to stay so profits don't dip and the share price winds up falling. It's harder to win back customers you've burnt than to find new customers. Do you know how to really keep your customers happy? Don't outsource you customer service to any other country but Canada. 

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The reason I rated Citi higher than Discover is b/c Citi offers the SP CLI increase if you have the luv button displayed every 6 months (which has given me significant CLIs over the past 2 years), plus I have had successes in having them lower my APR.  I'm not sure if Discover allows periodic or regular SP CLIs the same way as Citi -- so far, Discover has only granted one automatic CLI for me within the past 10 years of having them, and they always say that they will need a HP whenever I hit the luv button on their website.  Plus, Discover RJ'd me not just once but multiple times and without any late payments or baddies at all, before I was finally after many months able to negotiate the APR back down to a more reasonable level, that ultimately was still 2x as high as the APR I had with them before the first RJ.

So if by customer service you mean the availability of SP CLIs and refraining from repeated, unmerited RJs as a metric, then yes I would probably prefer Citi, and Discover will most likely never be my favorite card.  YMMV, based on the customer service metric being measured, and by individual experiences of various card members.

ETA:  plus, while both Citi and Discover have sent me mutliple 0% APR promo offers over the years, I have received many more offers as far as I can recall from Citi, rather than Discover.

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Discover offers online SP credit line increases, or you can call in. 

[Anonymous]

Also, just to continue playing devils advocate here, there's no real proof that the CSR "hung up" on the OP.  There are no time stamps at all, so we don't know how much time elapsed before the chat session ended

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Also, just to continue playing devils advocate here, there's no real proof that the CSR "hung up" on the OP.  There are no time stamps at all, so we don't know how much time elapsed before the chat session ended

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Actually there is because they're supposed to ask if there's anything else they can help me with.