Clear review: Marketing fraud

On June 18, 2023 my husband and I were approached by a CLEAR associate at JFK International Airport in NYC who told us that if we were American Express customers we were eligible for the FREE clearme.com priority boarding service. We signed up.

On July 2, my husband's AmEx statement arrived and showed a charge from CLEAR in the amount of $189.00. He called AmEx on July 5 to dispute the charge and was told he had to contact CLEAR in order to do this. Although puzzled by the AmEx associate’s response, he notified CLEAR, and then opened a dispute via the AmEx website. It was closed later that day by AmEx with the status detail: "As per your CM Agreement and/or merchant policies, we are unable to investigate this charge. Please contact the merchant directly."

Q: Since when can American Express not be relied upon to explore a case in which a merchant's representative straight up LIES to a customer about a service being free, and then charges for it? A: When it has a relationship with the very merchant who engages in such unscrupulous business practices.

This scam is widespread. A July 7, 2023 Google search of “CLEAR” and “clearme.com scam reports” shows 86 people have rated CLEAR 1.4 of 5.0 stars, and many have posted accounts of experiences very much like my husband’s and mine at JFK International Airport.

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