Reply To: Amex card suspended and then cancelled

[shaya]

tbtb31 wrote:

I don’t see how a private company should be forced to justify whom it chooses to do business with, especially given the highly competitive market place. There are hundreds of card issuing banks/building societies/fintechs/etc in the UK offering various card payment solutions to retail clients. If one of them doesn’t want to serve you then so be it. I would think very differently if there was only one game in town, but that’s most definitely not the case here.
As to “gaming” – it’s the card user who knows best whether or not they game the system. I for my part am glad that card issuers don’t allow themselves to be gamed over, each in their own definition, and leave disruptive customers to be dealt with by their competitors – may they find their luck there.

All of the above applies to normal commercial decisions, such as it seems to be in the case at hand. If there is any indication that a private business is treating customers unfairly based e.g. on discriminatory behaviour (race/gender/etc) then it’s a completely different ballgame, and it is perfectly right for authorities to step in. Same if there are industry-wide sanctions involved which prevent a client from finding alternative arrangements- e.g. an unwarranted negative entry in a credit reference agency database used by the industry. But there are already mechanisms in place to address such actions.

Hats off to the ombudsman in the above case, they dealt with it very professionally.

I agree they can choose with whom they can do business with. But…. Here is the big but. So can we. This isn’t a one way street and a flippant arrogant retailer will have there customer base decimated. The same will happen if Amex are not customer centric.

They used to understand that it isn’t them doing is a service. It’s a relationship where effectively we choose their services for a fee. A bit of humbleness and a willingness to work with their customers would go a long way