overpay - is it allowed / not?

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trudy

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Feb 28, 2007
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i tried to overpay (put my credit card on credit) my amex choice gold card to pay my auntie hospital bill.

it went through ok.
but when i tried to use the card today, it's declined.

i call the cust service, turned out i can't overpay because it's against their policy.

is this common with amex ? because i overpay my citibank visa card and wizard cc all the time without any problem -.-

at the end, because it's a busy time, i decided to use my visa card instead.
so embarassing! my uncle had to pay the rest of the bill using his overseas credit card. poor him -.-

now i need to reverse the bill payment -.-.

i know it's partially my fault for not confirming it with amex first. but how do i know ? my other card can do that why not amex ???
 
Diners have the same policy.On one occasion because of circumstances i wanted to do the same and by ringing was able to do it.
 
ic, maybe it's because i'm a new amex card holder so they won't allow me ?
-.-
 
Card issuers all set the own rule for Auto-approving transactions. In the case of Amex, common experience suggests that they will not auto-approve a transacton exceeding your credit limit.

So if you had a credit limit of $1,000 that is the largest transaction that could go through, regardless of any credit balance.
 
Card issuers all set the own rule for Auto-approving transactions. In the case of Amex, common experience suggests that they will not auto-approve a transacton exceeding your credit limit.
This is the way Amex works. No single transaction can exceed the card's credit limit. You can pre-pay the account and make multiple transactions, each being less than the credit limit. But then you may fall foul of the current Everyday Spend promo if they deem you to be undertaking bill splitting activities :rolleyes:.
 
Presumably you could ring AMEX and say - look I'm going to charge up my card - ie pay some money in and therefore artificially extend your limit - and ask them if they would authorise a one off higher transaction?
 
I've had the same experience. I needed to pay a large bill and thought I'd put it through on the amex. What a mistake that was. Card was declined and then blocked and when I tried to shop afterwards I got declined trying to purchase a few blocks of chocolates from woolworths. Called the number, allegedly had the problem fixed and was declined again the next day. It took another two phone calls and about 1 hours just to get the card working again. To make it worse the guy on the other end had the tenacity to try to chastise me about overpaying. I had two other plat cards that could have handled it easily and still received reward points at the same rate. You'd think they would be happy for the merchant fees...
 
So I should tell my 91 year old mother in law who got a pre approved platinum Amex invitation today that she should not accept?
Really shirty I am as mine was only for gold!
 
common experience suggests that they will not auto-approve a transacton exceeding your credit limit.

So if you had a credit limit of $1,000 that is the largest transaction that could go through, regardless of any credit balance.


This is the way Amex works. No single transaction can exceed the card's credit limit.

I have a $2000 limit on my Amex card.
Not too long ago i out through a transaction of $3500 (forgetting about the low credit limit)

It went through fine and i had not put any of my own money into the account.

As i remembered i had a low credit limit after putting the transaction through i read the T&C's for my card and it stated that as long as the balance is less than the credit limit at the time the statement is issued there will be no fees.

From what Amex have said and my experience it is very possible to charge more to the card than the credit limit.
 
While not impossible, they may charge an overlimit fee if you aren't in credit, and certain transaction values will end up with your card being blocked. From my experience once it's blocked it takes several calls to get things fixed properly.
 
I have a $2000 limit on my Amex card.
Not too long ago i out through a transaction of $3500 (forgetting about the low credit limit)

It went through fine and i had not put any of my own money into the account.
Perhaps they different policies for different types of card?? Nothing would surprise me at Amex. Inconsistency is the only thing consistent over there.
 
While not impossible, they may charge an overlimit fee if you aren't in credit, and certain transaction values will end up with your card being blocked. From my experience once it's blocked it takes several calls to get things fixed properly.

With the card i have the fee is only charged when the statement is issued

To quote the letter

American Express said:
Over Limit Fee - payable if, on the last day of the statement period, there is an over limit amount
 
I was told by Amex recently that I could not pay off more than the outstanding amount as the account would be red flagged and blocked for use. If you want to pay more than the credit limit then the easiest way to do this is to get the credit limit increased and then pay off the balance before the interest free days are up.

From what Amex have said and my experience it is very possible to charge more to the card than the credit limit.
Yes it is possible to purchase more than the credit limit on the account but then you may incur a $30 overlimit account charge.
 
If you are using the generic Amex charge card, you should have no problem to pay a single large transaction. Unless the amount is huge and out of your normal pattern, the issuer auth system automatically referred for manual approval to ensure the transaction isn't compromised.

If you are using generic Amex credit card, it normally charged up to your credit limit and it declines afterwards. However you can ring Amex and tell them what you plan to do so they can temp increase your credit limit.

The above somehow may not apply to your amex if it is issued by other financial institutions or banks.
 
Presumably you could ring AMEX and say - look I'm going to charge up my card - ie pay some money in and therefore artificially extend your limit - and ask them if they would authorise a one off higher transaction?

You would think so, but 2 fruitless hours on the phone to Amex in India yielded nothing but 'computer says no'.... :(
 
I am bit confused by this thread. On reading the OP's posting, it seems that she is just putting the Amex account into credit and over pay. Which I presume that there are some purchases in the account that needs to be paid but she paid over and above the amount and thus put the account in credit.

But she did or did not put in more than her credit limit? Maybe its me, but I don't think it was clear in her posting.

My own experience with my Amex Plat in Oct was that I did over paid by a few thousands $ (why? that's another long story!!:mad:) and it went through. When I discovered that I did have the extra $$ in credit in Amex, I started to put a lot of transactions through and was never declined a single transaction. However, the credit amount was not near the credit limit. So in my case, it was alright to over pay.
 
My experience is to call before doing the overlimit transaction, just make up some emergency situation etc. (Stress that you only have AMEX and no other cards...LOL) They did approve my $18000 transaction...

Otherwise just do a spit transaction.

But bear in mind that if you don't call, a ban is very likely which leads to nasty situation... (My partner got banned once and took days to clean the mess. But then more points for me hahah)
 
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