American Express
Scheduled online bill payments vanishing, late fees and rate increases

I am wondering if anyone else has had the following issue.

Every month, when paying my first of the month bills, I schedule my payments for my green card and optima online on the american express website. For years I have never had an issue. Then a couple of months ago for some reason my payments didn't post and American Express claimed no record of the payments. I was able to call to immediately pay and since this was my first "late" payment in 15 years, they were willing to remove the late fees and the 14% increase in my optima interest rate. For the next couple of months out of sheer fear of the same thing happening again, I didn't schedule payments and instead went ahead and paid until the month of October. I scheduled payments to be paid on the due dates for both of the cards at the beginning of the month. In the middle of the month I decided to pay my green card off in full, so I deleted the scheduled payment for my greencard and paid the balance in full that day which posted just fine. I did not touch the optima scheduled payment which was due to pay on the 21st.

When I went online to check today on my new statement, I saw that no payment had ever posted for my optima card and the rate had again been increased 14%. A call to customer service promptly allowed me to pay off the balance in full, and remove the late fee, but they were unwilling to drop the interest rate. (which doesn't technically matter since I paid the account in full but still it is irritating). The customer service rep asked if I had the confirmation number from the scheduled payment (I do not) so I asked him back if it was possible to look it up, he said he could not. It seems odd that he could find it if I have it but if I don't have it they can't look it up to find out if what I am saying is the truth. That seems improbable since these records would seem to be something you would want to be able to prove in either direction.

So I am wondering if anyone else has had this issue and if it is possible that AMEX is either ignorantly or even maliciously losing scheduled payments. I do wonder if they would dig for my lost scheduled payment transaction if I had a lawyer asking for it.

Company: American Express
Country: USA
Site: americanexpress.com

  <     >