In 2001 my beloved and I went travelling for a year. Due to leave on Feb 5th, it seemed a good idea to get a new Amex card before we left since the current card expired in May 2001. I rang them and explained the situation - they sent out a new card which expired ... in May 2001. I rang them again and tried to get them to understand that I needed it to expire in a different year and was told they could not manage that since it was more than three months from the expiry date and their computers stopped them doing it. (As a side note, I never understand it when 'customer service' people become subservient to computers - it's a machine, people!! :roll: )
The new card would be easy to get, they said. I was, after all, spending 6 months in North America mostly in the USA - just go into an Amex office there and get a new card. This sounded plausible to me. It is, after all,
American Express. Biggest mistake ever. Turns out that American Express does not have anything to do with American Express Australia and I'd need to get in touch with them. Time zones meant that the working day in Australia began after hours in America so I couldn't get them to call on my behalf to sort it out.
Ultimately managed to find a number that would accept reverse charges (I was on a lowly Blue card with no free help line for plebs). Ended up speaking with American Express Australia for close to 5 hours over 12 phone calls through 8 states trying to figure out where the card was. They told me all I had to do was to select a city I was going to (we had an RV and were driving around) and they'd get me a card sent there.
The most memorable stuff-ups were when:
(1) they sent it to the Vancouver office but it was not there when I went to collect it. Turns out they thought I meant "don't send it to Vancouver" when I said "send it to Vancouver".
(2) they sent it to Couer d'Alene in Idaho. No. Wait. That's what they told me. They actually sent it to Greensborough, North Carolina - the other side of the country. Evidently even though this was the fourth attempt to get me the card they were not sure whether I was peeved enough.
(3) the card was sent to Edmonton in Canada. Well, at least it was sent to the old American Express office that hadn't existed for four years - a demolished building. I eventually found the new office (again from the Amex website) and they took pity on me and just got on the phone and made me a card, wondering why nobody else had thought to do this.
My experience with the overseas call centres is therefore unique - at the time I was calling an overseas call centre, it was actually the one in Australia. And I'd have to say they are all a pack of incompetent buffoons. Regrettably at the time I was only able to get a Blue Amex card and therefore had to suffer the indignity of remaining with them. I've since had many other issues with their low levels of competence and find them to be one of the most useless companies I've had the misfortune to deal with. Everyone has different experiences obviously but I personally don't trust them as a card I can take overseas or rely on when things get more difficult than "here is the payment for my expenditure".
Things have changed relatively recently and it appears I won't be remaining with Amex for much longer - wrote a letter last night explaining my reasons for discontinuing their card and will mail it tomorrow.
