American Express

I’ve been an Amex member since 2006. I started with the Blue card, upgraded to Platinum in 2015. I spend $15k–$30k/month through the card and have never missed a payment. I also use bank e-bill autopay to automatically pay the full statement balance every month.

II have had e-bill autopay set up with my bank for years, always paying off the statement balance, yet for some reason my October bill was not paid (the bank says they never received the e-bill, Amex did not comment). In any case, I caught the error the next day and made a direct payment to Amex causing a payment that was 1 day late.

For that, Amex charged the $29 late fee and over $1,000 in interest.

Yes, more than $1,000 in interest for one day late. Their “trailing interest” system is complicated, but based on my balance this represents about 1,285% APR.

In 19 years, I’ve never asked Amex for any special treatment. But this time I called Platinum support and explained the situation and requested that the fees be waived as an exception. The rep said she could not waive the interest fees. All very polite. I asked to escalate and they sent it to credit, saying they would reach out with their decision. Well they did not and I called back a week later only to be informed the request was declined. The charges would stand.

Now I accept that this is in their cardholder agreement and they CAN charge it. What I do not accept is this punitive approach to a payment overdue by 1 day from a company that prides itself on customer service. In other words, I believe I SHOULD receive better customer service after 19 years of loyalty where I have always paid on time and my spend is quite high, earning Amex significant interchange fees.

I told them that if they couldn’t make this right, I’d rather cancel the Platinum card on principle. That triggered a transfer to the retention team, who spent 20 minutes reminding me about my points, remaining months before the next annual fee, and Platinum benefits, but still would not make me whole for the $1,000 in interest they charged me. So I canceled.

The weirdest part is that Amex is currently offering up to 175,000 points to attract new Platinum members, yet they were fine losing a long-standing customer over less value.

We also have the Chase Sapphire Reserve card so will just move our spend to that card, as they have so far always been good to us too. Mostly I’m just disappointed. I've been otherwise happy with my Amex and really wanted to stay a member, but in my gut this just feels wrong. Amex used to feel like a premium company, but their values now seem misaligned with mine.

So now I've paid my balance in full and I'm just waiting for my final statement - half expecting to see even more interest. We'll see.

EDIT: Thank you all for your comments. Many people are rightly mentioning the autopay feature could have avoided this. That is fair. On the other hand, I've been using bank billpay since long before Amex introduced the autopay. It worked for years until now. My chase sapphire is already on autopay so that issue will not happen again.

Payment methods aside, I still feel gut-punched because I thought Amex was a relationship focused company that valued its long-held customers. I was wrong about that and it is disappointing.