Is AMEX customer service now as bad as every other company?

[Kelvin K]

My wife has recently applied for an AMEX card, and I’ve also applied. For years I’ve had instant approval. My wife always had a “review” but the next thing you would hear was a card arriving in the post.

Both these recent occasions we’ve had a message on the lines of “it’s being reviewed” and a reference number supplied. Then we hear absolutely nothing. No comms to say you’ve been declined, no card in the post. I just cannot be bothered to call them, if they don’t want my business then it’s no big deal, I’ll crack-on with HSBC WE.

AMEX used to be the benchmark of customer service, now it just seems as bad as every other organisation. Sad.

[Aston100]

Not sure about your circumstances as there may be other factors at play.
However, Amex customer service took a noticeable nosedive since Covid and has not recovered.
Most of this is down to the useless overseas call centre who don’t seem to understand requests, and are generally inexperienced.

Overall, customer service has plummeted across all organisations due to a combo of inexperienced overseas call centres (some of whom seem to be fronting for many different companies) and a move to web-based useless chat bots that must be defeated before you get put through to a live chat agent who is barely better than the bot you managed to overcome.

EDIT: The Brighton team are fine (on the phone), but it isn’t easy to get hold of someone from there. Even when asking to be put through to Brighton, there is often reluctance to do so.

[Andrew.]

Amex have a long way to go before they get anywhere near as bad as most local authorities.

The refuse lorry broke down on the day my parent’s bins were due to be collected. So they’ve to store their waste until their next (monthly!) collection now. The same council has just demolished the listed Christie Clock in Stirling, and claimed that by putting in road calming on King Street, that acted as a weir, was nothing to do with business premises being flooded during a bit of Scottish drizzle last week.

(rant over).

[Travel Strong]

Yes.

Just a few years ago I found Amex customer service so great to deal with that I would actually tell friends and family about it after finishing a call with amex (sad but true!). Truly a delight, knowledgable, went above and beyond to ensure satisfaction – and seemed to have the authority/autonomy/ability to solve issues.

Now they are just as bad as everyone else.
Get junk information – 4 different stories from my last 4 calls trying to resolve the same issue … none of them helpful, none bothered in providing customer satisfaction or a solution of any kind. Just junk.
Had the same experience with several calls over the past 1-2yrs.

Their great CS was once genuinely a consideration when weighing up the card fees… no shock that i’m cancelling this month!

[Super Secret Stuff]

Yes, a small reason why I’m going to cancel by the end of the month

[CarpalTravel]

Depends on your scale really. Compared to the Amex CS of old and Capital on Tap, they aren’t very good.

Compared to Curve CS, they are premier class.

[executiveclubber]

I’ve noticed it getting a lot worse recently. On a recent simple call, the operator was so useless that we spent about 10 minutes going back and forth over my address and email about ten times, as apparently I didn’t hold a card with them. This was supposedly Platinum, but I doubt they even have a separate line for Platinum anymore let alone concierge. As for chasing the status on my supplementary card, was passed between 3 teams, all saying different things, and was left with no answers other than “maybe you missed a card payment” (I haven’t).