AMEX's late payment charges

Whilst I am in no position to judge the merits of Mr. AHO's complaint with AMEX I do know that good customer service involves listening to the customers' complaint and actually addressing the issue involved. It is not the hollow and empty platitudes of AMEX's reply which unfortunately leaves AHO none the wiser. The response indicates an absolute lack of any understanding of customer service which mirrors my own experience with AMEX in Indonesia.

I have been an AMEX gold card member for 24 years and held a dual billing card in Indonesia for three years. In May of this year AMEX introduced a five percent flat fee on rupiah and 3.9 percent flat fee on US$ for all accounts not paid by the due date. In the three months immediately prior to the introduction of this fee my account was always paid on time. In the months following the introduction of these charges until I canceled my card the bill was without exception, received too late to pay on time. For example the last bill due for payment on Monday Sept. 13 was delivered to me on Friday, Sept. 10. Couple this with the excessive nature of the charges, which are not reflective of market rates and are applied even if you pay only one day late, my level of expenditure on the card resulted in late payment charges of around Rp 400,000 per month, and you can draw your own conclusion about whether AMEX's focus is on their customers or themselves.

In view of the inability of AMEX to get the bill to me on time I refused to pay these charges and sent a fax to the General Manager of AMEX some three months ago requesting deduction of these charges. This fax was never answered. A telephone call to AMEX on receipt of the next bill, again too late to pay on time, elicited a promise to get back to me but no one did. A second fax to the General Manager at the same time also went unanswered.

A further telephone call to AMEX produced not a reply to my complaint but a faxed copy of the amended card member conditions outlining the late payment charges. Following the lack of any response from AMEX Indonesia copies of the correspondence were faxed to the regional head office in Australia with a covering fax which also received no reply. In a final reply eventually received from AMEX Indonesia they agreed to waive the interest charges on the latest bill but not the previous bills and the tone of their reply focused on my responsibility to pay on time in future, nowhere in their reply was there any acceptance of their own responsibility to get the bill to me in time for me to pay by the due date.

R. BRYANT

Jakarta