by wnissen » Tue Oct 04, 2016 1:18 pm
This whole subject was really eye-opening. I always though of Amex as the gold standard, as did many people. The card was less convenient to use (even in restaurants many times I got, "Oh, we don't take American Express.") and the merchant fees were definitely higher. But they certainly had a halo from the early days of outstanding customer service.
No more. My Visa charges got taken care of expeditiously. The number of stories I read about people who had to drag Amex to the right thing, even inside the mysterious 540-day window, were harrowing. Look, I get that purchase insurance is a pure cost center. I've had to make a car rental damage claim, and that definitely took multiple rounds of submitting various documents, by fax, including the one time I received a letter where they asked for more documents but left the section blank indicating what documents, specifically, those were. But Amex really screwed over a lot of people, including by giving them incorrect information. Not that Visa is perfect, but they're also not charging for a premium product.
Walter Nissen
