Amex

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your input.

But let me be clear. I am NOT moaning or whingeing and quite the opposite in fact.

Ok first. I run 2 businesses from my home. We have 5 sometimes more people working from these offices and trust them implicitly. We had one disgruntled person who we sadly had to let go. The accountant deals with everything from VAT, TAX Personal and Company accounts and payroll matters. He has been with us for many years. Anything that resembles a bill or money matters is sent to him.

The CCJ was after many letters were sent from a survey carried out on a previous property, including warnings of court actions etc. This one really did slip through the net and I take full responsibility for it. It is there and I cannot do anything about it, but in normal circumstances it would never have happened, we owed the monies and we did not pay it on time. The confusion was in this situation that the solicitor had said it was included in their bill and we subsequently found it was not. The CCJ is not the issue.

The only letter that was filed here had gone missing. It is only when you start to put the pieces together that this is what we had come up with. I should also said that the person we let go also had a relative living and working in Brighton. Coincidence...maybe.

I am certainly not blaming AMEX for investigating a matter that has been brought to their attention, even though iot was 9 months previous, it is a small amount and comparing my monthly spend and repayment record and also the long time we have held AMEX cards (Platinum and Gold) and following an explanation provided we were duly upset by their reaction.

The main point is that lenders are not permitted to take any information from a 3rd party in this manner as they admit as well. If they carried out a search then I could accpet that and then discuss a reasonable solution if required. By the way there is no other lender that has even taken this into account when considering additional credit requirements, hence my reference to irrelevance when considering the bigger picture.

I am not accusing them of lying to me. Experian by the way provide training to lenders on their systems and one very important part if that any lender carrying out a search on a borrower, must first have a reason to do so (i.e. they just cant go into the systems and carry out a search whenever they wish too and normally only carried out on application for borrowing) and they must leave a record of this search to show the borrower the reasons why and that a search was carried out. If the above was to happen then you could find for example that every lender that you have can carry out a search many times and this would result in a new creditor wondering why and it could go against you.

The next questions that needs to be asked is why then for 2+ years now they have not 1. Sent any statements, 2. Asked for any payments & 3 They have been updating the credit files to show excellent payments each month over this period of time?

Steve, I am not moaning. This is an unusual situation to say the least. I am just wondering what to do or what the future may hold. I am not even trying to 'get away without paying' as we have offered them on a thousand occasions to pay but they say their systems will not allow it and they are not collecting it.

The other good thing is that we now use other credit cards for personal and business purposes and have saved so much, something by the way I may not have considered due to our busy schedules to change and hence the poll.

anyone able to help or advise??

Hi M,

Thanks for coming back.

The BLACK card. It is an invitation only card. I had been invited by them for about 3 years but the fees are extraordinary high so I never took them up. I think its based on a certain amount of spend and of coure repayment record.

Your right to think that they may have carried out the search in relation to the upgrade but sadly was not the case as we found out. Actually we hoped it was.

Not in so many words. we never received a follow up letter to that intitial call which we were curious about and as of that day both cards were stopped. We continued to receive statements each month and we continued to pay. We always paid the platimum in full each month so this was paid anyway. The Gold card is a credit card which there was £6500 still left to pay.

During the time between the phone call (january) and june we continued to pay the Gold Card each month. Then we received I think in the April a charge for the annual fee for the platinum and hence made enquiries, where the customer services people were unaware that the cards had been stopped and promised many times to call us back. They obvisuoly escalted this and no replies were sent or received. In July they passed the account to a debt collection agency and it is part of thier T & C's that they can call in all the debt of all cards immediatly there is a default, despite the fact, by the way they recredited the annual fee and admitted it was a mistake after my very stern talk with them but did not and would not call 'off the hounds'. This is why both collection agencies vanished in the end as they knew they didnt have a case to answer. For over 2 years now we have not received a statment (as once it goes to a collection agency thier systems do not allow for that as they call in the whole debt and that should be the end of it.), the collection agencies went away, they cant reinsitigate the cards without admiting fault and they continue, for this whole period, to update experian as if monthly payments are being on time. Limbo land! Hence my dilemna and question. Am I making sense?

alexjohnson wrote:

Not really! So you had a Black card and a Gold credit card. There was a balance on the credit card. You got a CCJ and they demanded repayment in full which you couldn't pay, but somehow cocked it up so they wanted money for the fee? I don't really understand how you could be a Black customer on the one hand with a minimum income requirement of £100K (not theat they would ever be so tacky as to ask, of course...) and yet a £6,500 credit card bill you couldn't pay, when presumably you got Black because you are always jetting off somewhere?

Anyway if so that's not very good - though I would note in passing that this credit sharing is exactly what happens in the US and is exactly what banks want to do here under the guise of not extending credit to "help" the indebted. Micro rant - this is why idiot government should butt out.

I'm an Amex customer too - merely Platinum - and I think their customer service is about the best in the business, which is why I am willing to pay their exorbitant fee. I guess I don't understand why if your relationship was so good they would finish it over a £600 CCJ to someone else altogether. It just sounds like a !!!!-up. They happen. I don't think Amex is a bad company and I'm not reading anything into this. That doesn't help you but I don't think there's much to add, is there?

Alex, good fo you to come back on this. I didnt take the Black Card as I said above ven though it may have impressed a few people. You sort of have it right, it took them 6 months since stopping the cards to get to sending the outstanding debt for the annual charge on the platinum to the collection agency but as I said when I eventually did talk to someone in thier credit dept they refunded that but didnt stop the action. They didnt send the Gold Card account as this wasnt due or behind. It wasnt the case of couldnt pay but more so wouldnt pay the credit card off in one go on principle I suppose, as the platinum was already paid up and there was therefore no principle reason to have a collection agency on the case. Yes to both your questions in relation to the Black doing about 3 countries belive it or not every week. Its a killer! Sharing is one thing and I didnt know that happened in the US but here there are stict rules about who and when companies or employees of companies can look at your file. I ahve never heard of one bank sending another someones details like that. The customer service is what did it for me too and it is very good. Thye finished it on a £434 CCJ which is quite ironic considerting the monthly spend and repayments being amde. The relationhsip was excellent in my mind as I said they even used to call me if an internet payment wasnt made knowing it would be done there and then. It is astounding and I can only think it is a little sculldagory and mal intent on someones behalf but once they were on that course they couldnt stop it. The loser really is AMEX as they now dont gbet that level of business from me. Nor I about AMEX and actually I endose it still and quite disspoainted after all this time that we are here. My dilemna is though what to do now as its like a stalemate, they dont write to me, they dont send letters asking for the monies, they wont accpet payment and they update experian as if everything was good, for over 2 years now. Well done Alex and thanks for coming back to me on this.