Complaint Rating:

Company information:
American Express
United States
www.americanexpress.com

In 2001, I took out an American Express/Costco business card. Over the last 7 years I have charged and paid off up to $75000 per month in charges, and almost a million dollars in trade with Amex. I realize that this is small change to them, but it has been the lifeline of my business. I have moved most of my recurring accounts to auto pay with Amex (bad mistake).

On June 1st, I moved my business to a new location after 9 years. On getting the change of address request, it came to light that Costco had confused my father's (same name) social security number. We share the same first and last name, different middle name. Evidently, when the Costco employee pulled the file, he pulled my father's Costco business membership and assigned the card to that social security number.

Over the years, I've had to go through various security checks (such as increasing my spending limit to $75, 000). Various forms have been filled out with MY social security number, so this is not the first time I've given them my social. So upon "discovering" the discrepancy, I was asked to send them a copy of my social, a tax return, a current utility bill and a notarized form saying that I provided these in front of a bank officer. No problem.

When I called to check up on the progress, I was informed that I was a fraud, to discontinue using the card and then I got hung up on. Every subsequent call has, after a half hour of explaining the details, led to a "someone will get back to you" response. Evidently the fraud division at Amex doesn't like interruptions, because no one in customer service will connect me, and they tell me that once a fraud case occurs, no details are let out until the resolution.

The resolution, it seems, is to go back over 7 years of my bills and do chargeback’s against accounts that will accept them. What this is doing is creating a bad credit account with all of my vendors. So Amex is committing fraud by getting money back from my vendors for bills that were paid by me. My vendors are closing my accounts and not letting me pay with alternate credit cards because "I" have initiated all of these chargebacks.

Meanwhile, I'm sure that this is costing Amex a fortune to go back and do all this. And I call every other day to ask that they stop and, at least, call me and try to rectify the situation.