Complaint Review: Bluebird by American Express

I was having trouble adding a payee to my Bluebird billpay account, and the error message told me to contact the customer service number. I called them and explained that I was having trouble adding a payee.

The customer service agent did not understand my problem, and thought that I was having trouble logging in to my account. I explained to her that I was already logged in and I was having trouble adding a payee. She placed me on hold for nearly 10 minutes and when she picked up the phone again she said: "so you are having trouble logging in?" I explained again that I had logged in and that I was having trouble adding a payee. She placed me on hold again, and answered after another 10 minutes saying: "so you are having trouble logging in?" This cycle repeated 2 more times, until finally she told me that "I could not add the payee because Bluebird has had issues with the company in the past."

I asked her how she knew that the payee had had problems with Bluebird in the past if I hadn't been able to enter the payee and hadn't mentioned the name of the payee on the phone call. She simply repeated that Bluebird had had problems with the payee in the past. I asked her what the name of the payee was, as she must have known the name to be able to look them up and know that Bluebird had had problems with them. She told me that she "did not have access to their name," and I asked her how she could know that they had caused problems with Bluebird if she didn't even know the name of the payee. She had no answer, and I asked for her supervisor. She replied "my supervisor will say the same thing I did." I asked her to transfer me anyway. I was placed on hold for about 5 minutes before she picked up the phone again, saying: "so you are having problems adding a payee?" I told her that I was no longer concerned about that problem and that I had already asked twice to speak with her supervisor. She put me on hold again and someone who claimed to be a supervisor finally answered. He asked me if I had a problem with a payee, and I told him that I did, but now I was more concerned with the poor quality of their customer service. He asked what the problem was, and I said: "Your customer service rep lied to me when..." That was as far as I got because he hung up on me. I had been on the call for over an hour at that point and had been placed on hold 8 times.

This was a completely unacceptable experience.