Australian Money Forum

[geoffmerritt]

American Express bonus.

I accidentally came across an anomaly with American Express; to start with I will explain my situation. I run my own business and have a merchant facility that accepts Amex and I also had an Amex credit card. Also my plans were to pay off my existing Amex credit card debt and cancel my card.

My story starts with an intended purchase of a camper trailer, I was $1750 short of my purchase and thought I would access some of the available funds on the Amex card. The proper procedure as I later found out was to request a cash withdrawal from Amex. Instead I swiped my Amex card though my merchant facility, and then withdrew the funds from my bank account.

About a week after the funds were withdrawn and spent, I received a call from Amex stating that according to section xx and sub section xxx on the Amex terms and conditions I wasn’t allowed to swipe my Amex credit card through My Amex merchant facility and was required to repay the $1750 back with in 7 days. My response was to say…. well that isn’t going to happen…. and their response was to put it in to the hands of a credit collection agency and cancel my card.

Also, in the mean time my Amex merchant facility was cancelled, so my apologies to the 2 clients that paid by Amex last year…. they will need to pay with their Visa instead, I am sure they will be able deal with the disappointment.

My debt, which included the $1750 was now only $2400 when it was given to the debt collect agency. Received THE CALL, Mr Mxxxxx you have a debt……….. and we expect you to pay $1200 for 2 months to clear the debt. My response was…. well that isn’t going to happen…. how about $200 per month. After some debate the $200 per month was agreed upon and they would call in 3 months to review the situation.

Skip 3 months, my debt is now $1800, and YES they did call… with an offer! the offer was that if I paid $1150 within 7 days they would clear my debt…. That’s right clear my debt. After receiving a confirmation fax I paid the sum and cleared my debt.

My saving was $650, so for breaking section xx and sub section xxx of the Amex terms and conditions, my penalty was, Amex gave me $650.

Thank you Amex

[vilemerchant]

Excellent work! It's always good to get one over a global debt merchant like Amex.

[pointstores]

I hope you enjoyed the cheap camper trailer. While this is a great story I think it would be risky for anyone to try the same. It appears some circumstances changed during the repayment process and I think while your negotion skills helped you could have easily been stuck with the $2400 bill.