Reply To: Amex has cancelled all my cards!

[Ladyshopper]

Lady London wrote:

The Savage Squirrel wrote:

sm wrote:

Morning. My Amex is in my married surname and I always pay the balance off using my bank account in my maiden name. is it possible in these instances Amex could cancel my cards too due to names not matching? I’ve been with them many years BAPP. Thanks

Such a behaviour if they did so would be fairly clearly discriminatory of a protected characteristic; probably two in fact, as it would in the vast majority of cases affect married women (who of course often retain their maiden name in professional contexts).

It’s an interesting general thought, actually. Allowing a financial institution to close accounts with no reason given could in theory allow them to act in highly discriminatory ways without recourse or repercussion; potentially another reason that summary account closure without giving a valid reason is problematic?

I was thinking about a few other cases where people whose disposable income had actually gone up as they had retired, paid off mortgages and no longer had to pay out family costs such as school fees, were reported on here. These people had not expected to have their application declined by Amex, or had cards suddenly terminated without any reason they were aware of. Offering to redistribute their existing credit, so that overall Amex’s exposure to them losing the guaranteed secure income for life they had, would not increase, had still met a rejection or incomprehensible card(s) termination by Amex.

Is Amex now discriminating against retired people? Or discriminating against prospective and worse, discriminating against existing customers even if their income is guaranteed for life, if it takes the form of a pension or annuity, or refusing strategized drawdown even if ample investments as an income strategy?

This looks perilously close to age discrimination, direct and indirect, to me. IMV they’re already skating dangerously close to gender discrimination since their refusal to take a homemaker’s share of the household income into account, particularly that of a married homemaker.

Since they brought in their minimum income requirements and stopped allowing household income to be taken into account, I can no longer get any Amex card. Nothing has changed within our household, I have full access to all the household income, as I did before when I could get an Amex card in my name. However, since my ill health police pension in not a full pension and doesn’t meet the minimum income requirements, that’s it for me in terms of Amex cards. It is a little but frustrating when I’ve happily been having Amex cards in my own name since retiring in 2017 up until around a year or so ago.