Amex decided to cancel all my cards

[Alex V]

We are writing to update you on the progress of our investigation into your complaint. It’s important to let you know that we are still reviewing your complaint and, at this time, we are not yet able to provide you with our final response. In order to perform a full and detailed investigation into your complaint, it has been necessary to consult with one or more third parties and various teams, and we are still in the process of obtaining all of the relevant information required to properly conclude our investigation.

Once we have completed our investigation, we will send you our final response which will detail the investigation we have conducted and confirm the outcome of your complaint. Please know that we aim to close all complaints within 7 weeks of receiving them.

It’s been a month, I’m going to give it another month and then will submit a complaint to FOS.

[Supergers49]

Alex V wrote:

it has been necessary to consult with one or more third parties

That’s an interesting bit of information. I wonder if it could be, (1) Querying a transaction with a merchant that their systems auto-flagged as a breach of terms, or (2) CRA to verify income-to-debt concerns, or (3) Sanctions list provider (i.e. mistaken identity).

I’m in no way suggesting you’ve done anything wrong, but in all situations I can see how an automated process or junior member of staff could end up mistakenly closing your cards for erroneous reasons.

[Harrier25]

I agree, this doesn’t sound clearcut to me either, especially if they are communicating with a 3rd party.

[SteveJ]

The 3rd party is an interesting angle.

OP, sure there hasn’t been any PayPal friends and family going on?

[George K]

Alex V wrote:

We are writing to update you on the progress of our investigation into your complaint. It’s important to let you know that we are still reviewing your complaint and, at this time, we are not yet able to provide you with our final response. In order to perform a full and detailed investigation into your complaint, it has been necessary to consult with one or more third parties and various teams, and we are still in the process of obtaining all of the relevant information required to properly conclude our investigation.

It’s been a month, I’m going to give it another month and then will submit a complaint to FOS.

This is probably not very helpful to you, but I got the exact same text for a complaint I opened up with Amex a couple of years ago. Still have the email. Amex will eventually get back to you, so it’s worth waiting to see what their final response is and then act accordingly.

Keep us posted!

[LondonFly]

George K wrote:

Alex V wrote:

We are writing to update you on the progress of our investigation into your complaint. It’s important to let you know that we are still reviewing your complaint and, at this time, we are not yet able to provide you with our final response. In order to perform a full and detailed investigation into your complaint, it has been necessary to consult with one or more third parties and various teams, and we are still in the process of obtaining all of the relevant information required to properly conclude our investigation.


It’s been a month, I’m going to give it another month and then will submit a complaint to FOS.

This is probably not very helpful to you, but I got the exact same text for a complaint I opened up with Amex a couple of years ago. Still have the email. Amex will eventually get back to you, so it’s worth waiting to see what their final response is and then act accordingly.

Keep us posted!

What did you do wrong?

[George K]

I think in my case this was certainly the other way around, but I actually can’t remember what this specific complaint was about. Not that I complain frequently… (I must have done maybe two or three in the past decade). I’ll go over my letters pile when back.

[Alex V]

SteveJ wrote:

OP, sure there hasn’t been any PayPal friends and family going on?

Nope, I never transferred money from my amex cards.
I had some large payments, which could have triggered debt to income ratio concerns, but I always paid the full balance at the end of each month.

[supergraeme]

My partner and I got the boot about four years ago – they were absolutely rigid in it and would tell us a thing. I had recently referred my mum for her her first card, then I’d done a decent chunk of the spend on it as a supp (but nowhere near all) – that’s all we could think of as we don’t do anything else that’s frowned upon.

I called and called and spoke to one guy several times, but he wouldn’t tell me anything due to privacy rules/data protection and other such meaningless things – on one occasion I brought my partner into the call and he relented slightly which made it seem like she was part of the issue, but he still wouldn’t really say anything. Eventually in one of my begging sessions calls he “spotted” something on one of the accounts and it changed everything – he wouldn’t say what but everything was almost immediately reinstated and has been fine since.

All very odd. A part of me wanted to believe they just made a mistake.

[Cranzle]

Submitting a SAR before raising a complaint would give you a better chance of finding out what the issue may be. I’m doubtful you will get any meaningful information now that they’ve evidently looked at this closely.
Even the FOS complaint is likely to be a waste of time. They are free to choose who they do business with and will certainly hide behind ‘commercial sensitive’ information to ensure nothing you receive can be held against them.

In my opinion, SAR are under-utilised. My tactic would generally be to submit a SAR before expressing my concerns about anything and then hope to use any pertinent information from that request against them in a complaint.

• This reply was modified 55 years, 1 month ago by .

[Barraclough]

BuildBackBetter wrote:

Barraclough wrote:

This article may cast some light (a little anyway) as to why Amex sometimes close cards. It relates to AmEx in the United States but there maybe some crossover to the Amex UK.

“American Express Shutting Down Cardmembers Who’ve Used Special Amex Welcome Offers – Forbes Advisor” https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/american-express-shutting-down-cardmembers-whove-used-special-amex-welcome-offers/

That has been discussed before. It’s more to do with a rogue representative in the US who was abusing an offer – potentially benefitting personally while acting as a representative.

The Forbes article also suggests other reasons for Amex closures apart from a rogue representative such as excessive buying of gift cards and self referrals. Here are a couple of extracts for the benefit of anyone (like me) who had not seen an earlier discussion on HfP of the Forbes article:

How to Avoid Falling Prey to Amex’s RAT Trap
Years ago, Amex launched an internal Rewards Abuse Team—not-so-affectionately referred to as the “RAT” division by cardmembers who have interacted with it. This team is tasked with protecting Amex from cardmembers who are abusing the system. Based on past data points, there’s a lot that Amex cardmembers can do to get on the bad side of the RAT division.

Manufactured Spending: The clearest abuse that the Amex RAT division seems to be looking for is so-called “manufactured spending.” Examples could include buying a significant amount of Visa, Amex or store-branded gift cards. You shouldn’t have to worry about running afoul of the RAT division if you’re just picking up a few gift cards for the holidays. Amex is looking to crack down on cardmembers who are purchasing large quantities of gift cards as this may resemble money laundering.

Self-Referrals: Another no-no for Amex is referring yourself for a new Amex card. When you refer a friend to an Amex card, that link allows your friend to apply for any Amex card—not just the Amex card from which you generated the referral. That means you could use your own referral link to sign up for a new Amex card. While you might be approved for the new card, Amex’s RAT division is likely to claw back the referral bonus. For repeat offenders, Amex may shut down your accounts.

Link Transfer Partner Accounts
Once their accounts are closed, former Amex cardmembers have been unable to access their Membership Rewards accounts online. Some cardmembers have been able to call Amex to request a transfer of Membership Rewards points to an airline or hotel partner. However, those transfers are limited to airline and hotel partners that were linked prior to their account being shut down. Even if you’re not worried about your Amex accounts being closed, it’s not a bad idea to link your airline and hotel loyalty accounts to Membership Rewards anyway.

[Alex V]

While my complaint is still with the Financial Ombudsman Service, I just wanted to give some update on what’s been happening.

Back in January both my wife and I received emails from amex stating that our accounts are blocked and all cards will be closed in two months period (by mid-March). I had amex gold and BAPP, which I closed without waiting for two months so I didn’t need to pay extra fee for this period. My wife had a free amex BA card, and she decided to do nothing. We just destroyed both cards (I was a supplementary card holder) but she didn’t bother calling them to close it earlier as there was no reason to waste time on the phone. We assumed it’ll be closed in March.

Fast forward to May, and my wife received an email from amex that her monthly statement is ready. That was weird given we expected the account to be closed. She logged in and the account is active again. Back in January there was a message “your account is blocked, call us if you we haven’t been in contact with you yet”. Now there is no such message. We ordered replacement cards and these were delivered today.

[Lady London]

So where’s the apology then?