American Express Wrecked My Rating!

kyoob

Logged on to my CreditExpert to get my report on saturday, everything seemed normal till i saw a CANCELLED american express card account with a 5 on the account - a serious out of control mark on my account (equivalent to 5 missed payments!!).

The most annoying thing is that this account was paid in full and cancelled in April 2005, and has been happily Dormant since then, the card was registered to a property i no longer own (and the card was settled months before moving) so something went wrong 6 months ago, and month on month amex has been posting increasingly bad ratings on my report.

Goodness knows what would have happened without me checking, i have had no phone calls or emails (they still had these on file) so er, thanks for calling! :mad:

I called up amex, got their automated phone desk thing, logged in, which you would think was tricky to do since the account was dead a year ago, but hey ho. Finally got through to a human, who first told me that my account had only been cancelled a few days ago (is there a smilie for flabbergasted?) and then after correcting him with hard fact, he put me on hold for 15 minutes, where i paced the whole house with anger and worry, which by then i figured they had discovered their mighty screw up, i was greeted and apologised to and asked if they could call me back later... yep something definitely went wrong.

About 2 hours later i get a call from the same customer service guy (Philip) who said that the problem had been corrected and that i should check my credit report later this week to see that it had been put straight. (I couldn't probe him why this had happened as i was in noisy traffic)

Why oh why did/could this possibly happen, with no communication, i could have been blissfully unaware i was about to get an '8' on my account which would have stopped me getting credit from most places.

A warning to all, when your accounts are closed, they're not really. I will post again to let you know what happens to my credit report.

ariba10

When I cancel a Credit card I write to them and ask for a writen reply as confirmation. No problem.

kyoob

I have the cancellation letter, and the statement stating the balnce was zero, and the minimum payment was zero - dated april and may 2005 respectively. Hence me thinking all was done and dusted.

M_Thomson

kyoob wrote:

Logged on to my CreditExpert to get my report on saturday, everything seemed normal till i saw a CANCELLED american express card account with a 5 on the account - a serious out of control mark on my account (equivalent to 5 missed payments!!).

The most annoying thing is that this account was paid in full and cancelled in April 2005, and has been happily Dormant since then, the card was registered to a property i no longer own (and the card was settled months before moving) so something went wrong 6 months ago, and month on month amex has been posting increasingly bad ratings on my report.

Goodness knows what would have happened without me checking, i have had no phone calls or emails (they still had these on file) so er, thanks for calling! :mad:

I called up amex, got their automated phone desk thing, logged in, which you would think was tricky to do since the account was dead a year ago, but hey ho. Finally got through to a human, who first told me that my account had only been cancelled a few days ago (is there a smilie for flabbergasted?) and then after correcting him with hard fact, he put me on hold for 15 minutes, where i paced the whole house with anger and worry, which by then i figured they had discovered their mighty screw up, i was greeted and apologised to and asked if they could call me back later... yep something definitely went wrong.

About 2 hours later i get a call from the same customer service guy (Philip) who said that the problem had been corrected and that i should check my credit report later this week to see that it had been put straight. (I couldn't probe him why this had happened as i was in noisy traffic)

Why oh why did/could this possibly happen, with no communication, i could have been blissfully unaware i was about to get an '8' on my account which would have stopped me getting credit from most places.

A warning to all, when your accounts are closed, they're not really. I will post again to let you know what happens to my credit report.

Why did they put 5 missed payments on?

kyoob

I'm unsure - and will press for a straight answer on friday when i ring them.

Credit Expert showed a debt owing of 73, which is an odd figure, esp as their non payment fee is 25.

There must have been some kind of false transaction to start racking up fines and charges etc. Will let you know.

merch

Had you signed up to Amex's 'Card Defence' card protection scheme and nominated this card for payment? Money would be taken out annually.
What about any other Continuous Payment Authorities?

kyoob

Not sure if i signed up to it, but surely they can't have a back door to add transactions to a cancelled account, they would have to go through the usual debit process? They corrected the issue (apparently, i have no proof yet) and i assume the credit report repair may take a week to propagate. If it was my fault i'm pretty sure they would have stuck to their guns?

merch

kyoob said

they can't have a back door to add transactions to a cancelled account

Read through this thread.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=256

I've had a similar experience with a CPA. As it was for a card protection scheme from a 'reputable' company I managed to get it cancelled ok. I then had the money refunded into my credit card account and had the issue resolved. As some of the postings in the thread say, other 'dodgy' companies aren't too keen to cancel CPAs and can make life difficult.