Is American Express for real?

[Anonymous]

I'll play the devil's advocate here for a moment. In all this chatter, I missed where you are already a customer of AMEX. If you are, I would suggest calling in to speak of your displeasure of how you were mistreated during your chat session.

If you are not, how can you expect a company to treat you like a 10 year-long customer?

The end line to this is: If you are that unhappy with the level of service you received, simply try again or take your business elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
I'll play the devil's advocate here for a moment. In all this chatter, I missed where you are already a customer of AMEX. If you are, I would suggest calling in to speak of your displeasure of how you were mistreated during your chat session.

If you are not, how can you expect a company to treat you like a 10 year-long customer?

The end line to this is: If you are that unhappy with the level of service you received, simply try again or take your business elsewhere.

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Because that's business 101.

If you were getting a quote from an auto insurance company and the person whom you were speaking to was rude while gathering all of the information, would you want to be a customer? Would you expect that person to be rude or nice? I don't see your point. Long time customers should be treated better, but potential new customers should also be treated very well. Companies want new customers to add to the existing ones, so why would it make sense to treat them like crap?

I'm taking my business elsewhere. But in all of the light of how much American Express has fallen over the years, I just thought I'd point out one reason as to why. 

[lonnyphillips]

Well said, and what if it was an accident that the chat was ended!! Just a thought

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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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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And what if this rep didn't get that training?  You nor I have any way of knowing that.  Why not ask for more training?  Simple, because new employees don't always have the balls to stand up to their boss, or don't want to look weak in asking for something so soon.  I'm not saying it's right, but that's how it goes sometimes.

Have you ever run a business where you've had to train a bunch of employees?  I run one and have 85-100 employees working for me at any given time in an industry where 100% turnover annually is common.  We have strict training programs that we are able to adhere to 95% of the time.  But, there is that 5%.  There are times when we are in a pinch and corners get cut on training due to staffing issues or other influences.  It's never my plan or intention, but there are times when new employees are pushed into the deep end of the pool too early.  When they have a CS issue, if they weren't training 100% to our standards, I take the blame for it and I don't hold them completely accountable; it's simply not right to do so.

I'm not saying I don't agree with some of what you're saying, I just feel it's ill-advised to say something as blunt as an employee should be fired in 2 seconds when we may not even have close to all the information to make that call.  I've fired hundreds of employees over the course of my career based on sound information, but I can assure you that number would be in the thousands had I made my calls based on extremely limited information. Again, not saying that this is certainly the case in this example, just offering a different perspective to consider.

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[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@creditguy wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

To me, much ado about very little.  Every week we seem to have a post that states "so and so bank is the WORST EVER!!!!" because of some horrible transgression against the poster.  No different than dealing with any company in life, you'll have some good experiences and some bad ones. The only true horrible company out there is Comcast, as they are run by the Devil.

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As someone who has had to deal with 6 of their CSR's 2 supervisors, 3 technicians and one visit to their store in the last two weeks I could not agree more, however I do think that the devil has demoted, there is something far worse running that place. 

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So combining your two posts, you CAN'T judge a company by one interaction, but you CAN by 12.   So what is the magic number!

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after being a Comcast customer for 10+ years and experiencing everything from a csr not being able to find my account and hanging up on me to a technician detecting a "signal glitch" and cutting off our cable for three days without notice, I can fairly and objectively say that Satan and Zombie Hitler are the joint CEOs of Comcast.

As for AmEx, nothing but stellar service to date.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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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. 

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Right, which is something taught in training, and as already discussed we have to consider that this employee may not have been properly trained.  For all I know an hour elapsed before that chat was closed out of by the CSR since there are no time stamps.  Not everything is black or white.

[Anonymous]

Amex isn't the company they used to be. With all the competition out there they have been forced to adapt or they'd be gone. From what I've seen its much easier to get their cards nowadays. A neighbor just got in with a 600 fico with a 1k limit. The prestige of an amex card seems to be gone and it's turning into more and more a regular everyday card. Look at how much they advertised the everyday card to soccer moms taking the kids to lunch.

That's prob why you hear about fr more often. They seem to give more chances than they used to which is a good thing if they want to keep up with the times. The market is forcing amex to change whether we want that change or not.

Look at how they brought out the serve prepaid card. A lady at Walmart asked me if I wanted to sign up for it. Didn't amex hate Walmart and give people problems for shopping there? Not anymore

Times are different now. The rich and elite have more options than ever so amex has to branch out. The rich people at work have all dropped amex for other offers. That also can mean cut backs and customer service seems like one of the first cut backs.

[Anonymous]

On the other hand, amex does seem to rely on their brand name too much I think. They really need to come up with something that competes with chase. Chase seems to be top dog right now with some of their card offerings

[Anonymous]

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@galahad15 wrote:

The customer service that I received from Discover has, for the most part, been either average or slightly below-average; not really sure what everyone is so excited about them for, as the CSRs I have spoken with virtually no real power at least IME.

The best CS I have received from banks and CUs, in order from best to worst, would prolly be:

(1)  FNBO

(2)  [tied] Unify FCU, and thus far with them, Premier America CU

(3)  Citi

(4)  Cap1

(5)  BoA

(6)  Discover

(7)  Chase

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I'm noticing a correlation between your list and the APR you pay.  I suspect our lists would all be slightly different, because, as we always say, YMMV

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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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. 

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You can request a SP Disc CLI every 3 months.  I have gotten a few.

You an request a SP Citi CLI every 6 months.  My Double Cash card is STILL at $500.

Based on the criteria being set out here, you can see where my vote would go.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Amex isn't the company they used to be. With all the competition out there they have been forced to adapt or they'd be gone. From what I've seen its much easier to get their cards nowadays. A neighbor just got in with a 600 fico with a 1k limit. The prestige of an amex card seems to be gone and it's turning into more and more a regular everyday card. Look at how much they advertised the everyday card to soccer moms taking the kids to lunch.

That's prob why you hear about fr more often. They seem to give more chances than they used to which is a good thing if they want to keep up with the times. The market is forcing amex to change whether we want that change or not.

Look at how they brought out the serve prepaid card. A lady at Walmart asked me if I wanted to sign up for it. Didn't amex hate Walmart and give people problems for shopping there? Not anymore

Times are different now. The rich and elite have more options than ever so amex has to branch out. The rich people at work have all dropped amex for other offers. That also can mean cut backs and customer service seems like one of the first cut backs.

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Also, they have their Bluebird card.  When you get credit back from Walmart's price match, they will put it on the Bluebird.  (I picked one up when they offered to double the credit if it was loaded onto the Bluebird).  I understand that you can reload the card at Walmart CS.  They really have embraced their former enemy.