Corporate AMEX card - legal position?

Tim_L

Very specific question. My company is obliging me (and indeed most employees) to apply for a corporate AMEX card.

Regardless of the pros and cons of having one of these, does anyone know whether they are allowed to legally mandate an employee to carry and use one of these cards?

jonesMUFCforever

I would imagine that it is the company who is ''applying'' and the employees will ne named as cardholders.
Please correct me if that is wrong.
If that is the case then yes it is legal.

I cannot see that it would be legal to force an employee to have to apply for a credit card for work related use.
If this is the case I would suggest contacting your union.

lisyloo

What is the real objection here?

I think it's reasonable of your company to want to do their admin efficiently.
If you dig your heels in and refuse then you aren't going to look very grown up, so what is at the root of your objections?
I think you need to discuss this in an adult way with your employer otherwise it could affect your future prospects.

billion25

The company may not have the right to mandate you use the Amex corporate card. But, they surely have a right to refuse to re-imburse expenses placed on another card.

cm233lh

My employer does the same. It's a bit of a pain having to carry a corporate Amex, and it means I don't get the cashback, which would be considerable on frequent trips to USA and Singapore. But it's company policy - I'm spending their money so I do it how they ask. I guess there must be some corporate cashback deal, or just some clever salesman somewhere at Amex.

gt94sss2

cm233lh wrote: »

My employer does the same. It's a bit of a pain having to carry a corporate Amex, and it means I don't get the cashback, which would be considerable on frequent trips to USA and Singapore. But it's company policy - I'm spending their money so I do it how they ask. I guess there must be some corporate cashback deal, or just some clever salesman somewhere at Amex.

More likely it allows your company to receive consolidated statements for all employees - probably electronically, with software allowing them to break things down very easily by:

- employee
- cost centre
- type of spending etc

It would also make processing expenses much cheaper for their finance department..

Regards
Sunil

lisyloo

I guess there must be some corporate cashback deal, or just some clever salesman somewhere at Amex.

Or possibly it just simplifies company admin?

Funnily enough we used to have coporate barclaycards.
They got withdrawn a few years ago because the admin of tying up expense claims and statements meant we had to employ 0.5 of a person.
Now we just use our own cards and special arrangements are made for people without cards.

inmypocketnottheirs

A pal of mine who works for an international PLC was also forced by his company to apply for an Amex card. In his own name. So the company is then using it's employees good credit! Unbelievable!

lisyloo

A pal of mine who works for an international PLC was also forced by his company to apply for an Amex card

Why was he forced?
Was it part of his contract?
I'm pretty sure a company cannot force you to do this.

What do they do about people with poor credit ratings who are turned down?

A few people in my company refuse to have credit cards and the company has to make alternate arrangements (like paying for hotels directly).

People should be prepared to stand up for themselves.
Obviously it depends how strongly you feel about something but people in my company regularly refuse to travel to Pakistan, Israel, Nigeria etc.

ckerrd

Company I work for tried to insist that staff who claimed expenses took a company Barclaycard.

Impossible to enforce.

Was challenged by a number of individuals who just said no thanks, I will continue to pay for expenses and claim them back.

When the company said "you must have a B/Card or else" people said "or else what?"

People who did take it were liable for the expenditure and the debt - not the company.

If you don't want one don't take it.

lisyloo is spot on

Tim_L

The pros and cons of the cards are understood.

The specific situation I'm in is that an edict from our US based parent company has been issued with a very short deadline (actually just over a week). They haven't provided any information regarding the t&c on the cards, or details such as who is responsible for paying bills on time, what internal procedures exist for checking receipts, what happens when cards are lost or stolen (bearing in mind many people would use them infrequently and might not notice) and so on. The cards (Amex) have joint liability, and these are quite legitimate concerns - because I'm known for doing moneysaving stuff with cards I'm getting to field a lot of the questions from colleagues.

Actually the parent company have specifically forbidden admin here from answering questions, and are pointing us to a half finished web site with no contact information and no actual information. They have a bit of previous form for behaving in a high handed way: a previous request for personal employee information rode roughshod over data protection rules, and was eventually withdrawn.

There are some indications that payment for actual tickets may be moved from a central billing system to individual cards, which could have serious implications for individuals' cashflow.

So what I'm trying to do is to push back a little to get some explanations. To do this I'm declining to take up the card, and because I travel a fair amount I don't want to get stiffed for hundreds of pounds in hotel bills as a result. I don't use a cashback card for expenses, so it's really no big deal to switch, but I do resent being told to do something without being given the information I need on how the card operates. I'd have thought that legitimate expenses are legitimate expenses, whatever the means of payment.

There are some other issues about the way Amex deal with this sort of thing. One of the worst is that they are also taking on travel bookings, and to do that travellers have to lodge personal information. There's no opt out on this form for marketing use: individuals must instead write separately to Amex. It's pretty clear that this is deliberate: business travellers are a lucrative demographic and there is clearly value in having their details.

And of course the fact that Amex is a pile of pants as a card generally.