American Express, Amex ripoff - unauthorized charges Ft Lauderdale Florida
on November 14th 2003 I was contacted by phone by Amex Card Member services and was told "congratulations I had been enrolled at no charge in their Premium Baggage Protection Plan and their Travel Delay Protection Plan".
I told the caller that I categorically did not want these "benefits" and I did not authorise my enrollment.
In April 2004 I discovered, after booking 5 airline tickets on my Amex card, that they had billed be $9.95 for each ticket for "baggage protection" and $9.95 for "Travel Delay protection" despite my categorical insistance that I did not want their services. This was a total of $99.50 in spurious charges that they just snuck onto my bill.
Amex is running a scam here. They enroll business card holders in these services against their will then sneak the (relatively small) charges onto the account in the hope that they won't be noticed or won't be challenged since a business is paying.
To most business travellers these "protections" are worthless and are no liability to Amex since business travellers predominately travel with only carry on luggage and are usually on a ticket that can be rescheduled without any penalty.
Amex is no doubt making a small fortune at very little risk by slamming their customers with these charges.
Check your monthly statement very carefully.
Will
Phoenix, Arizona
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Harriet
Tamarac,Florida,
U.S.A.
Not amex doing this it is it's employees
#2UPDATE Employee
Sat, July 23, 2005
The enrolling in the service by American Express is nt a business scam. This is actually done by employees. When you call Amex, as with most companies, with and issue with your credit card at the end of the call you may have noticed a rep talk to you about a certain benefit and want to sign you up. This is called a CFS (Customer Focused Sales) pitch. It's commonly practiced with most credit card companies.
Amex pays it's employees commission so everytime an employee makes a sale they make money and the more sales they make the more money they make. Unfortunately there are dishonest employess who falsify sales. Sometimes they sign you up after you say no and sometimes they may have never spoken to you about it and sign you up anyway. You may not have even have called Amex and a rep will still sign you up by pulling up accounts.
American Express is working on this problem and do record every phone call that is handled by these CFS reps. Unless we hear from the cardmembers themselves most of the times this goes unoticed unless they caught doing it on a call that is randomly listened to. IF this happens to anyone where a service of any kind has been added without your permission please contact amex immediately and ask them to listen to the call.
Amex will fire that representative immediately.