Green Peg Blog » Blog Archive » Case Study: American Express-a-Pus

Case Study: American Express-a-Pus

I used to be under the impression that American Express was a company that cared about their customers. My recent experience suggests that they are more like the octopus pictured in this playground. The head is hollow, disconnected from its tentacles and the number 3 tentacle does not know what the number 8 tentacle is doing.

When I called the customer service department at AMEX I had one question. A bank statement showed AMERICAN EXPRESS ELEC REMIT and a long identification number. The question to customer service was: what person or vendor vacuumed this money out of the account? (I have my suspicions but that is not related to the service lesson here.)

The initial voice mail they left for me to “resolve” my problem contained no information whatsoever! No follow-up number. No resolution. No issue tracking number. No information on what they had done. No information on what they were doing. No hint that they had logged this problem. No suggestion for moving the issue forward. No estimate on how long this issue would take to resolve. No attempt to call me back. Zip.

What I quickly discovered that was their agents had no training on handling these sorts of issues. It went outside their fragile and robotic training. It had nothing to do with my own American Express card but they could not even log the issue without my card number! What would have happened if I didn’t have an American Express card? This issue had nothing to do with my own AMEX card or account.

Eventually, after hours of phone calls, being put on hold, being disconnected, having to re-explain the situation multiple times and faxing bank statements to incorrect fax numbers that they provided, I eventually got: Zip. My issue went to their “CLAIMS RESEARCH DEPT.” (Translation: black hole of ineptitude that can only communicate by postal mail.) They simply would not tell me (the sole owner of the bank account) what person or business that AMEX electronic withdrawal was related to.

Finally, after not resolving my issue, they sent me a follow-up survey on their service. I took the time to give them some honest feedback on their abysmal service and included my phone number. Did I hear anything from them? No.

Case closed. The American Express-a-Pus expels a last bit of ink onto a useless letter and submerges until another one of those pesky customers swims by the den.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Nightmare Service, Service Humor, Accountability in Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.

Case Study: American Express-a-Pus

Jim Schmidt

Jim Schmidt

Blog Archive

Categories

Pages

Meta

Blogroll

Share Customer Service Experiences!

Subscribe to Posts

Recent Posts

Recent Comments