Amex card suspended and then cancelled

[CH]

Ash wrote:

How can anyone abuse the shop small offer (that’s not an invitation for a guide)….it’s a £5 off offer…I mean how many times could you possibly use that.

I believe it used to be £5 back on a £5 spend, way back when… And not limited in number of times you could use it.

[JDB]

CH wrote:

Ash wrote:

How can anyone abuse the shop small offer (that’s not an invitation for a guide)….it’s a £5 off offer…I mean how many times could you possibly use that.

I believe it used to be £5 back on a £5 spend, way back when… And not limited in number of times you could use it.

The case is a great read:-

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN5311667.pdf

[Ash]

That was a fun read

“for example, one occasion 13 payments of £10 were made to one
merchant within three minutes on cards in six different names. I think it unlikely that Mr
C and five family members were all present at the same time”

Lol

[Scott]

Ash wrote:

That was a fun read

“for example, one occasion 13 payments of £10 were made to one
merchant within three minutes on cards in six different names. I think it unlikely that Mr
C and five family members were all present at the same time”

Lol

Interesting case study; unlikely 5 cardholders were all in the shop at the same time, but what’s the cut off for ‘reasonable’ use ? Two people max? Three?

I recall a few years back visiting the Post Office with my partner, using our 6-8 Amex cards to buy that number of £10 gift cards to get £5 back on each one. We wouldn’t have bought the cards had it not been for the Amex offer, so on that basis the offer worked as intended, but I’d say we were also gaming the offer. Should Amex shut have shut us down?

[Ash]

JDB wrote:

CH wrote:

Ash wrote:

How can anyone abuse the shop small offer (that’s not an invitation for a guide)….it’s a £5 off offer…I mean how many times could you possibly use that.

I believe it used to be £5 back on a £5 spend, way back when… And not limited in number of times you could use it.

The case is a great read:-

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN5311667.pdf

That was a fun read….”for example, one occasion 13 payments of £10 were made to one
merchant within three minutes on cards in six different names. I think it unlikely that Mr
C and five family members were all present at the same time”

Lol

[John]

Scott wrote:

Ash wrote:

That was a fun read

“for example, one occasion 13 payments of £10 were made to one
merchant within three minutes on cards in six different names. I think it unlikely that Mr
C and five family members were all present at the same time”

Lol

Interesting case study; unlikely 5 cardholders were all in the shop at the same time, but what’s the cut off for ‘reasonable’ use ? Two people max? Three?

I recall a few years back visiting the Post Office with my partner, using our 6-8 Amex cards to buy that number of £10 gift cards to get £5 back on each one. We wouldn’t have bought the cards had it not been for the Amex offer, so on that basis the offer worked as intended, but I’d say we were also gaming the offer. Should Amex shut have shut us down?

They would have grounds to shut you down but perhaps they didn’t want to lose so many customers. I did the same and there was no indication that Amex was unhappy with me. Just be a lot more cautious now… That goes for all banks too

[JDB]

Scott wrote:

Ash wrote:

That was a fun read

“for example, one occasion 13 payments of £10 were made to one
merchant within three minutes on cards in six different names. I think it unlikely that Mr
C and five family members were all present at the same time”

Lol

Interesting case study; unlikely 5 cardholders were all in the shop at the same time, but what’s the cut off for ‘reasonable’ use ? Two people max? Three?

I recall a few years back visiting the Post Office with my partner, using our 6-8 Amex cards to buy that number of £10 gift cards to get £5 back on each one. We wouldn’t have bought the cards had it not been for the Amex offer, so on that basis the offer worked as intended, but I’d say we were also gaming the offer. Should Amex shut have shut us down?

@Scott for starters, it sounds as you were two people using your own cards, vs one person using the cards of six people, five of whom weren’t present and additionally I think you might find it wasn’t a first offence…

In general, as suggested by others above if you value your relationship with Amex, and the longer term points/voucher opportunities, it pays to be more careful these days. Like the losing gambler, not many victims of account closures announce the fact but it still happens a lot.

[zapato1060]

JDB wrote:

Like the losing gambler, not many victims of account closures announce the fact but it still happens a lot.

Also find it funny/weary when gamblers state their winnings but never their loses.

If a person is MS’ing you have to constantly be looking over your shoulder.

I remember doing the £15 off £25 Amazon accounts with Amex vouchers more than a dozen times when it ran before. That unknowingly, possibly had me on thin ice.

[tbtb31]

JDB wrote:

The case is a great read:-

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN5311667.pdf

Fantastic entertainment. Well played, Amex!

[jpa]

Good like in getting £4500 out of a BA 2 for 1! Also he could have still used the voucher with any Amex card didn’t have to be his own. I have seen this before with too many supplementries on one account all taking part in the offer being flagged.

Can’t see them even looking at shop small transitions now given the max £25 liability per card. These sort of cases are why these limits came in

[FearlessTraveller]

Harrier25 wrote:

Maybe a big spend straight off in month one raised a few flags.

If that’s the case, the best course of action would be to wait for that big spend i order to build that relationship with AMEX (depending on the credit limit on the card)

[shaya]

Amex have become very trigger happy lately. I have been an Amex customer for years and years never missed a payment and had the same experience. The same goes to many of my acquaintences.

It’s very easy to say well you must have had something wrong etc. Maybe we did or maybe we didn’t. It isn’t relevant. You can’t treat your customers and very loyal customers like that.

Zero communication and 100% obfuscation. On our sme we probably spent 100s of k and still we were thrown out like dogs.

I tried reaching out to anyone and everyone. I was whistling in the wind. Nobody cared. Guys brush it of all you like until it will happen to you one day.

[SteveJ]

shaya wrote:

must have had something wrong etc. Maybe we did or maybe we didn’t. It isn’t relevant.

I’m not sure how you can say it isn’t relevant if you’ve done something wrong?

[shahidemran]

@Reximus you said you are going to soeak to manager, any update on your case?

[Peter K]

SteveJ wrote:

shaya wrote:

must have had something wrong etc. Maybe we did or maybe we didn’t. It isn’t relevant.

I’m not sure how you can say it isn’t relevant if you’ve done something wrong?

This! If someone has done something wrong and gets punished for it, then surely there’s no room to complain. They have just reaped the rewards of their actions.

[shaya]

The point I was trying to make was… Even if there was something wrong there is no reason to be given the runaround and silent treatment. Amex were not interested in any dialogue at all. They were uncommunicative and hid behind ‘we can’t tell you’ ‘we don’t know when’ etc.

And on a personal note no I didn’t do anything wrong. I think it’s just amex’s modus operandi at the moment. It just means that capital on Tap gets my business

[The Savage Squirrel]

shaya wrote:

The point I was trying to make was… Even if there was something wrong there is no reason to be given the runaround and silent treatment.

There’s obvious and quite sound reasons why no financial business would explain to those who have raised them exactly how their security/abuse/laundering/whatever markers are triggered.

I’m back with Amex having been booted from COT (not for anything nefarious) so just shows how wildly personal experience can vary…

[alig4th]

Peter K wrote:

SteveJ wrote:

shaya wrote:

must have had something wrong etc. Maybe we did or maybe we didn’t. It isn’t relevant.

I’m not sure how you can say it isn’t relevant if you’ve done something wrong?

This! If someone has done something wrong and gets punished for it, then surely there’s no room to complain. They have just reaped the rewards of their actions.

I suppose it depends on who is defining the “wrong”. If, there is a clear breach of a specified T&C, then yes, fine. But if the T&C are vague – e.g. unspecified “gaming” – then I suppose there is room to be confused/annoyed/complain, for example,
1 – one person using 10 cards in 6 people’s names to split a furniture bill
2 – a couple and one set of parents using 4 cards (maybe three main and one supp) to split a restaurant bill
3 – a couple using a card each (main and supp) to split a shopping bill
4 – a couple using a card each (both main card holders) to split a restaurant bill

1. Could arguably be a deliberate attempt at “gaming” (splitting “furniture” costs between 6 people isn’t necessarily “normal”)
2. Genuine activity which AMEX may see as gaming giving the likely quick succussion of payments at the till and the potential interlinked accounts from referrals/credit reports.
3. Could arguably be seen as gaming, but could also be how the couple divide their finances.
4. Could be gaming, could be finance splitting.

The people in 2/3/4 may not consider they have done anything wrong, but AMEX algorithms might and, if they do it a few times (without any gaming intent), could lead to closure, but without AMEX ever telling them why/what they “did wrong”, so not giving them the chance to explain.

And unless you’re a clued up reader of sites like HfP, if all you see is the headline “spend £15, get £5 back” who wouldn’t say to their partner “oh, let’s split this cost (shopping/restaurant/furniture/whatever) and we’ll get £10 back instead of just £5”. They’re taking advantage of an offer that’s legitimately advertised to them, although AMEX may see this as “gaming”.

[tbtb31]

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.

[alig4th]

tbtb31 wrote:

I don’t see how a private company should be forced to justify whom it chooses to do business with…
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…

Agree with the first statement to a point, and that’s fine at sign-up, but to be cancelled as a customer – especially by a financial product – could be quite worrying to an individual who doesn’t know what they’ve supposedly done to be cancelled… “Have I been the subject of fraud? are other companies seeing the same thing AMEX did and are going to cut me off? will this impact my upcoming mortgage?”.

On your second statement, yes, glad they don’t allow “true” gaming, but it does risk other customers who AREN’T disruptive, just using the offers AMEX gave them getting caught up, which leads to the issues I’ve said above. If they could just say “we judged you abused Shop Small” or something (not even needing to say WHAT they deemed that abuse to be) would be useful to know

[shaya]

Exactly….

Talk. Mediate. Do something! There used to be sme managers that you called talk to. They have been axed and Amex are spending money on hyped up checkers who don’t care about their customers or customer relationships.

Personally I think this is a massive problem with amex and they will come to realise this.

[JDB]

I don’t think there is anything wrong with Amex; as above, they are quite entitled to decide who they take on or keep as clients. If you were an owner or manager of a business, would you really want customers who are constantly on the make? I also don’t see why Amex should advise anyone precisely what level of shenanigans they will allow. A little bit of common sense and knowing right from wrong by the customer will go a long way.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

@alig4th

Even some of those suggestions you make could be seen as gaming.

Sharing a restaurant bill is fairly common but is paying a weekly Sainsburys (other retailers are available) shop across two cards?

The most common response to that is why couldn’t the second person just pay the first one back or put them through as two separate shops?

And with Sainsburys you can’t share the bill across separate nectar cards with their different offers!

[alig4th]

BA Flyer IHG Stayer wrote:

@alig4th

Even some of those suggestions you make could be seen as gaming.

Sharing a restaurant bill is fairly common but is paying a weekly Sainsburys (other retailers are available) shop across two cards?

The most common response to that is why couldn’t the second person just pay the first one back or put them through as two separate shops?

And with Sainsburys you can’t share the bill across separate nectar cards with their different offers!

Those were all just theoreticals off the top of my head, so didn’t think through the shopping one fully. I suppose you could put £15 worth of items through the till, pay, then another £15. In this scenario it does feel more like “gaming” given the evite l effort

[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