American Express
P.O.Box 981535
El Paso Texas 79998-1535
U.S.A.
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American Express Raising interest rates, lowering credit, not putting agreements in writing, lying El Paso Texas
1Author
1Consumer
0Employee/Owner
My son had to run up a large balance due to being unemployed. They kept raising the interest rate which caused an over limit balance; then they kept charging all kinds of penalties for being over limit, which kept getting worse, as they added tremendous amts. every month.
It became impossible to meet the due amts; they refused to listen; I enlisted the help of a pro bono lawyer. After providing with a POA, he finally got them to agree to 6 months of no interest and then it should revert to only 9 percent interest instead of the approx,. 30 or more % they charge. They would never put it in writing as promised. He tried to talk to them again. They said his POA had expired, so we got a new one.
Then they refused to talk to him. No legitimate reason. They keep lying to me. They also charged late fee after the agreement was in effect,when the pmt. was not late.
The lawyer asked them to settle the acct. with a lower balance and told them I would pay it off. They refused, stating it was an Amex card obtained thru Costco.
Most of the charges were not from Costco and this shouldn't have had anything to do with it. They will not talk to him and are very deceptive and I still have nothing in writing to show what they stated about the 9 percent interest when the 6 months are up. I'm afraid they will then continue their crooked methods of all sorts of penalties, causing the balance to go higher and higer so that I can never get it paid off.
The lawyer said this was the worst entity he had ever dealt with in all his years in practice.
I want to know, first of all, if there is any way I can make them accept a settlement of a lower amt. than the almost $10K balance and make them also put their agreement in writing.
Natalie
Denver, Colorado
U.S.A.
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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
1Author
1Consumer
0Employee/Owner
Updates & Rebuttals
#1 Consumer Comment
AUTHOR: Robert - Irvine (U.S.A.)
SUBMITTED: Saturday, February 14, 2009
POSTED: Saturday, February 14, 2009
American Express is one of many companies that will not settle accounts for less, and there is nothing you can do to force them to. Credit card companies will very rarely put these type of offers in writing. However, from what you have wrote they are keeping to the 0%, because you are just worried that they "might" not continue with the 9% when this 6 months is up.
The fact is that when your son opened up the account he agreed to their terms. They did not force your son to use the card. You say he used it while he was unemployed, so how did he expect to pay them back? You say that they raised his interest rate and that caused him to go over his limit. NO his spending up to the limit, and not paying enough to keep it below the limit, caused him to go over.
As to the old saying you get what you paid for. You got a lawyer to work "pro bono" on a debt issue. Honestly if you negotiated with a lawyer to do that, YOU should be the one working with AmEx. But if they keep the agreement of the 9% there is not much more you will be able to do with them. One other alternative is to just stop paying all together, have them charge-off the account in about 3-6 months. They will sell it to a collection agency and you can attempt to deal with them. Although if you think AmEx is rough, just wait until you have to deal with a 3rd party collection agency.
