Posted: 1/27/2003 7:48:48 AM EDT
| What's the deal with Amex? Do you have to pay it off every month? Also, with the anual fee and decline of establishments that accept it, what's the benefit? Just curious, as I've never had one. |
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AmEx looks very good on your credit rating report. No pre-set limit. Yes, you must pay it off every month. For me, this is good - keeps me in check. No interest. Worth the $55 yearly charge IMHO. I found that $55/year was ALOT cheaper than the interest I was paying on a low-interest VISA. |
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But if you charge a large purchase to the card, you have to pay it all at the next billing cycle. The only reason I put anything on a credit card is because I can't pay it off within the month. Feedingcannibal, if you paid the Visa every month you wouldn't have any finance charges, would you. Is Amex harder to get than most cards? |
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You have to be careful with some credit cards - some will charge you interest from the moment the purchase is made. I believe these are more rare, so yes, theoretically, if you pay off the VISA / MC each month, you would not incure finance charges. However, I found that I could never do this. Now I only carry the AmEx and I am debt-free. |
| I've had the best customer service from American Express than any other cards I've had. I have a Delta Skymiles card. I don't have to pay the balance off every month, but I usually do anyway. I was told that it looks really good on your credit compared to other cards. |
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I had an AMEX once. I paid it off monthly. The last month I had it, I accidentaly wrote the check for $0.10 under the correct ammount (10 freakin cents!). They charged me about $30 since I didn't pay it all off. I told them to shove their charges and cancel my account. |
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They suck.............. I got shipped the wrong stuff one time and i am talking one hell of a load.I refused the truck and AMEX let the merchant charge me for shipping.That is fair if i refuse the right stuff but it was the merchants mistake. Needless to say i canned my AMEX card.I still take it at my business but only for the customers sake.I got rid of my personal card. USAIR visa is the best and you get air miles. Just pay it off every month. Eric the ammoman |
| The customer service is/has been great. Amex is pretty much a pro-customer company. I use it just because they are so hard on the company that is trying to charge your card. You try to return something and they say no at first just mention the fact that you bought it with your Amex and your gonna dispute the charge and watch the tune change. Unfortunately for me I have seen the problems with Amex and merchants up close. Once a wife signed her husbands card with him right there-they get home and later get the bill which they dispute-I get stuck out because the card user was not the one who signed even though I had a signed document that proved he was there-These people were scammers who had learned how to scam the amex system. I have several of their cards from the Blue to the Plat.(no Black one yet, but I can hope!!!) I have had several larger purchases that they called just to check if it was really my charge. They also have a service that that will find you last min tickets to sporting/concert events ect ect. The points are an added feature and if you figure out how to use your card for your companies’ purchases you can really see the points grow. |
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In regards to amex they have several tpyes of cards: no limit/due in full: credit limit/pay off ver time. mem fee and no mem fee.. On most of the cards that have a fee if you use the benefits the cards pay for them selves.. The customer service is by far above and beyond many of your visa/mc cards. Although anyone can have a bad experience, but than can happy with any company.. Their dispute prossess tends to be more favorable to the cardmember, but also remember that the mechant is a customer as well, and the credit card be it amex.visa.mc is just the billing agent.. On the amex credit cards as with most other cc if you dont pay you r revovling balance in full, you will be charged full interest on the whole bal, and if you dont make at least the min payment, be it a hundred dollars short or ten cents, you will be chrgd a late fee, as with all most all cc.. However they are normaly more forgiving with an ocasional infraction, but repeated lateness will not get those fees credited for you.. Now for the no preset limit/due in full charge card acnts for the ocasional infraction as long as the payment is rcvd a few days after the due date you are fine, but a few weeks and they will hit you with the fee...Good Luck... |
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get a Amex card.most of their cards are pretty good,but if you are late and know that you are late don't call up and say [b]I wasn't in the states,so I couldn't pay my bill,so I shouldn't pay my late fee's!"[/b] their answer maybe [b]well I bet the mortgage, utilities and insurance got paid![/b] and if their is a mistake on the company part don't take it out on the customer service rep. its 99% chance it not their fault. more people that gets the card less chance that my wife will loose her job at Amex. |
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Amex started the current trend in company credit cards which is putting the card (and thus the credit rating) in the employee's name. Companies like it because the cards are not in their name (with the exception of the executives) thus it is not their credit report and thus rating. The credit load does not affect it. Amex liked it because it swelled their cardholder enrollment and, thus, growth rates to keep up with MC, VISA. But the biggest bonus was that the companies would receive quarterly kick-backs on the interest and/or charges (Amex does factor a heftly late payment fee on purpose... revenue generation). The employee, who's credit rating is on the line, received the "short end of the stick" on these types of cards. They are not even considered a creditor during a bankruptcy. These types of cards are very popular in the high tech companies. I believe Hewlett-Packard was the first company to issue these AMEX cards. It went like this... The executive in charge (now the CIO at Cargill) signed the agreement with AMEX. HP send the names of all their employees, addresses, and SS numbers to AMEX. AMEX reveiwed each one's credit report and sent cards to the employees that passed. All bills are sent by AMEX to the employee's home. None of these employees asked for the cards, but these were issued in the name of the employee and not the company, HP. AMEX even left the HP name off the card (per agreement with HP). Subsequently, BusinessWeek wrote a favorable article about it. Since then, HP and other high-techs including it's spin-off Agilent, have switched over to a true credit-card because the kick-backs on cards that charge interest is better. The only thing is that HP doesn't reimburse the employees interest payments. It is up to them to file the travel expense report for reimbursement before the grace period. This deal sucked for obvious reasons. Since then, some of the high tech companies modified the program so that the payment bill goes to an accounts payable department. This has the disadvantage of the card holder can no longer see the payment of the bills even though the credit is in their name. It would suck to learn that an employee was turned down for a home loan because someone in accounts payable screwed-up unbeknownst to them. Well, that's one small side of a history for AMEX and the industry. None of you are probably interested or give a rat's arse. |
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Quoted: I like the fact of no set limit...You can never tell when something may go wrong or a group purchase may come up!! Yeah right. I used to have an Amex Gold Card about ten years ago. When I tried to pay for a $200 purchase, it was rejected. Talk about embarassing - everyone looking at you like you had stolen the real guy's gold card. Plus - had it been that emergency that you want a card like Amex for, it woudl have been completely useless. Thanks Amex [rolleyes] - I cancelled it after that. My fiancee uses her a lot, though - and the benefits and points are definitely worth the $75 per year for her. Not for me - I can get humiliation and embarassement for free, why pay $75? |
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Quoted: Quoted: I used to have an Amex Gold Card about ten years ago. When I tried to pay for a $200 purchase, it was rejected. Why was it rejected? When I complained about it, they said that it was because I hadn't used it in a while, and they wanted to make sure it wasn't stolen. I still thought it was lame - it wasn't like I hadn't used it for months, and I didn't use it particularly regularly to start with. Plus, it wasn't like it was thousands of dollars. None of my regular credit cards would have rejected a $200 charge because I hadn't used the card in a while. Maybe I should have been grateful because they weere looking out for me - but it seemed unreasonable to me. |
| I can tell you why not! In the past 3 years, American Express has fired or terminated at least 3000 full time employees or contractors in the IT field, and either outsourced their positions to India or Manilla, or replaced them with local Indians with H1 visas. The IT industry in Phoenix is permanently "pharked" because of them. May they reap what they sow some day. |