The Ancient and Honorable AMEX Scams Us Again:  Peter’s ALTERNATE WORLD ENCOUNTER:  Have you ever charged something on your credit card and forgotten about it?
Many people have.

Typically what happens is the bill from the American Express credit card company arrives in the mail, and you see a charge from a couple of weeks ago that you just don’t remember.
So, you pick up the phone, call AMEX and say I don’t remember this charge, or I don’t believe I owe this, or something like that.
And the customer service personage says to you, no problem Sir or Madam, we’ll just put that on hold, have a nice day!
And you have a nice day.

Meanwhile, the merchant who accepted your credit card (that would be me) begins an Alternate World Encounter (the Alternate World is NOT nice):  our bank account (that is, Yukiko’s Floral Design Studio’s) is blocked and the credit card company impounds the money and leaves me to prove why we should get it back.  

So, the merchant (me, again) calls you and reacquaints you with the transaction.

You, of course, are a reasonable person, terribly embarrassed by this unintentional, awkward mistake, and yes, of course, you will call the credit card company to straighten it all out, and you do.

And the American Express Card’s customer service personage is very kind and understanding and assures you it will all be straightened out immediately, not to worry, and have another nice day.
And you do.

But the credit card company is American Express:   behold, the Alternate World Encounter descends to a lower level.
The merchant (meaning me, of course) knows you have been told the “hold” is being released immediately, so I ask our bank to unblock our account, get the money back from AMEX and we’ll all let bygones be dog bones, or whatever.

But no, that’s NOT going to happen.

AMEX tells our bank, NO.  They say they’re going to fight it to the limit of 75 more days.
(And by the way, AMEX holds the money while they think of what to say after those 75 more days).

The first time this happened to me, I said to myself, surely this is a mistake — a company like American Express would not LIE about a hundred dollar charge just to keep their hands on our hundred dollars for about three months.
An old and respected American institution like AMEX wouldn’t do that.  Would they? 
Well, they wouldn’t do it just for our hundred bucks.
But this second time around I realized the AMEX context:

• AMEX has millions and millions of credit card accounts, some have disputes/nondisputes like this one.
• The money AMEX holds from these “holds” adds up to a huge amount of cash in their vault —
• So much money that even a venerable institution like the American Express Company is ethically challenged to deal with it.

American Express Company’s ethical dilemma is this:

• “Shall AMEX give back the cash to all those merchants now, or later?”
• Guess what: “later” wins.

And that means that AMEX’s decision to keep the cash gives themselves a huge float of other peoples’ money (including our miniscule hundred bucks) for several months.  Some would call AMEX’s dilemma a “moral hazard,” while others might simply call it a scam.

But wait!  The Alternate World Encounter descends a further level:  is the venerable American Express Company on the list of big time recipients of US Government bailout money?
Yes, it is.
And does a substantial portion of the US Government bailout money come from merchant taxpayers?
Yes, it does.
American Express Company, have you no shame?
I mean, really.

And one more thing: when Yukiko’s Floral Design Studio asks clients if they would like to use Visa or MasterCard – there’s a reason.  And, yes, this is it.

Peter Neibert