Weird problem downgrading Amex card

williamgz

After thinking long about it I decided to downgrade my Amex platinum charge card to the preferred rewards gold one, had a chat through the amex secure message centre where they asked me a few questions and told me to call over the phone for the downgrade.

So a couple of weeks later I called for the downgrade and another rep told me there would be no problem but I had to do it online, basically applying to the gold card using my account so that it would process as a downgrade. Since it was over the weekend and I wasn't in a very talkative mood I decided to go for it.

Surprise comes that, after 5 days I received a letter saying that my application was rejected??!! I'm sure I saw on the online website it was a conversion and not a new application. Called again and a nice lady told me she had no idea how it could've happened and offered me to start the conversion again.

I'm not sure what's going on as it seems story is going to repeat itself.

How is possible a downgrade of cards of the same type can be rejected? And, does it usually take this long? I thought this would be a smoother process.

Anyone has experienced something like this?

Thanks

Marchitiello

I have spoken to Amex about upgrades and downgrades. You have to do it over the phone, and if the change of product is allowed, your account with them will remain the same (it will be the one account reporting to the credit agencies).

However, when you have applied for a new rewards account, as you still had the platinum one, this was automatically rejected as you are only allowed to ha have one product from the same family at the time

williamgz

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, that's what I suspected even though I clearly stated over the phone I wanted a conversion / downgrade. Let's hope this time it goes through fine.

Marchitiello

Mention a product change from Platinum to Gold, it may be the common way they describe it

firsttimemover

I had a similar issue a few years ago with Amex when I tried to change from the everyday platinum cashback to the regular platinum cashback card. If I recall correctly all communication was done on the phone, but it ended up going through as a completely new application, which in my case was accepted. New cards arrived, new pins, and for a while Amex assured me it was the same account. The credit limit was higher than my existing account too, which was odd! It took a while to sort out, left a search and new account on my credit file (which is now showing as settled, but they didn't remove it despite several attempts asking) and it's the one time I've felt a bit let down by Amex Customer Service. It seems the process for changing the account type really could do with some improvement!