Complaint Rating:

We have been American Express cardholders for years in order to access our car insurance through Costco. A couple of years ago American Express began a campaign to encourage cardholders to pay bills electronically. We preferred to avoid this payment option and noticed that despite being paid well in advence of the due date, we were told that the payements were arriving late. Customer service agents at AMEX told us it would be better to pay online and avoid this problem which they attributed to the post office. We chose not to do this but instead started paying by phone. Last month our bill was not even received until 13 days after the due date. The envelopes are prepaid so there is no record of the postmark and as usual customer service agents are blaming the post office for the delays and encouraging us to pay online to avoid these issues. We have never had a problem with any of our other mail! We called our local post office (who has fielded similar complaints from other American Express customers, some of whom had to pay for priority delivery to avoid late penalties) and they deny the problem is at their end but unfortunately they have no way to track the incoming bill without a postmark.
We have spoken to other Costco members who have had the exact same problem but most of them got tired of fighting late fees and switched to the online payment system. We also spoke with a Costco employee who was familiar with this problem from others who had similar experiences. She told us to fill out a complaint about AMEX and encouraged others to do the same...So if this has happened to you please let Costco hear about it and perhaps they will drop this credit card company in favor of a company that is more ethical.