What Ever Happened To Customer Service?

Sometimes I am so happy to have this blog and get to vent a little bit about personal things that happen in my life. Today I am completely pissed off at American Express. I have had an account with them for years. Held huge credit lines and paid them off over and over again. For the first time I have needed to dispute a charge. Why? Well, I bought some “educational course” from a guy on-line that turned out to be a con-artist (yes, I am embarrassed), maybe after this all gets resolved I will write a little rant about him.

Anyway, so I have a dispute open with them, no problem right? Well when you open a dispute American Express “representatives” read there little script (yes, don’t hate when you can tell everything is a canned response? And any REAL question you try to ask them, they just ignore you and move on to the next canned answer in there “rolodex-of-answers”) and tell you that “everything is going to ok, they’ll get your money back… blah blah blah”.

Well this really concerned me because they didn’t ask for any evidence from me and no details. So when I called back to find out how I could talk to someone about my dispute and send them information I couldn’t believe the answer I got. The lady on the other line (and I am not joking about this) said “You can’t talk to anyone in the dispute department, everything happens through our system and they don’t have phones”.

What?! No phones! Really, this is what she said. So being a little pissed off I asked this American Express “representative” the following… “You mean at a company as large as American Express you are telling me that you have an entire department that sits somewhere unknown and nobody is allowed to communicate with them?” She calmly said “yes, there is no way to communicate with them they don’t have phones”.

I replied, “you mean the entire dispute department, that is in charge of stopping fraud both against American Express and it’s members doesn’t have one single phone in the entire department and not a member of that department has a phone on their desk?”

Her answer was “Yes”

Ok, this is totally unacceptable, how can American Express honestly research claims of fraud without letting the people claiming fraud talk to anyone or provide any proof? How can a fraud claim be reduced down to a check box choice of 5 or so descriptions? How can a company expect it’s “loyal” customers to be satisfied talking to someone that just ignores them and reads a script in an overseas call center. Especially when it is obvious that they don’t even understand what I am talking about. Don’t I deserve better as someone that uses his American Express for every purchase I make and then pay-off in a timely fashion?

Thanks for listening to my rant. I am just so annoyed right now I can’t take it. Oh yah, as soon as this dispute gets resolved I am closing my American Express account. I am sick of them sending me mailers telling how much they appreciate me and value my years of membership, yet they don’t even provide their fraud/dispute department with phones.

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