KYC issues …. again

[DTraveller]

Wondering if anyone else has been hit with KYC issues again?

One of my 2 AMEX cards was silently suspended about a month ago (card still active in account / app) but is declined for purchases in person and online. The other card on the account is working fine.

After contacting AMEX they initially told me it was an issue with the physical card, and sent me a new one. Then when that didn’t work they told me it was a KYC issue. I completed a KYC check earlier this year which was resolved successfully within a couple of days.

The support team are contacting the KYC team by mail, but they don’t seem to be getting any response. I’ve spent about 90 mins over the last week on chat / phone trying to get to the bottom of it, with various promises of “I’ll call you back within 24 hours” “It’s all resolved, your card will be working in 24 hours” etc.

I’m now waiting for a call back from a manager, and in parallel have started a complaint about the support experience. Being told repeatedly that there is no issue, and your card will work in X hours, when clearly it’s pending some update has been deeply frustrating.

I’ve had no contact from the KYC team looking for any additional information.

Has anyone recently been through this, and having any tips for escalation (or suggestions to ease my frustration 😀 )? I think most of the forum threads on this are from earlier in the year when the first round of KYC checks were underway.

[KenC]

KYC?

[JDB]

KenC wrote:

KYC?

Know Your Client. The checks that take place at the time of application to identify your customer and compliance with regulatory/money laundering requirements. Financial institutions are expected to maintain such checks on an ongoing basis. These mainly happen behind the scenes, but if they identify issues that appear anomalous or either can’t obtain the information they need automatically or don’t like something they see, they may seek it directly from the customer, sometimes suspending accounts in that process.

[Reney]

Know your customer

[Andrew.]

DTraveller wrote:

Has anyone recently been through this, and having any tips for escalation (or suggestions to ease my frustration 😀 )? I think most of the forum threads on this are from earlier in the year when the first round of KYC checks were underway.

Just make sure you’ve done all the relevant checks yourself first. Check with Equifax, Experian etc that everything appears in order, you’re on the voter’s roll at the exact same address that Amex have for you.

A colleague is currently going through a faffy period with his bank over KYC. Turns out that he is a Director of the company that owns the Freehold of his apartment (a fairly common arrangement), the company has been a bit tardy in submitting its financials, so has had a notification to strike off issued.

Big data has connected notification of strike-off, his details as a director, and identified that he is a potential risk as a personal customer.

[JDB]

@Andrew. yes, I think some may forget just how much information is available to financial institutions. The story you mention has probably been picked up from The Gazette which HMRC and financial firms will check daily.

[DTraveller]

Just to update on this, after ~2 months, and multiple calls/chats to the support team, my card account was silently reinstated.

I had lodged a formal complaint regarding the situation – in particular regarding the runaround I was getting with the customer service team. The card account started working again about ~1 week after the complaint was lodged.

The complaint was upheld with a £ gesture of goodwill, but they couldn’t explain exactly why the card was suspended, or transactions were failing.

Hopefully this won’t recur, but for others it may be worth escalating to official complaint level, as the responses and information from the customer service team was useless. Hopefully this improves, as customer support was much better previously.

[jpd2022]

Had exactly the same issue. Spend hours trying to fix it, uploading KYC documents, talking to hotline staff (at least 15 calls over the past two months). Got letters with links (didn’t work), constant system errors. Card got suspended now and contract terminated. Hopeless and frustrating. Funny that my business card (same account) is still working.

[Cranzle]

DTraveller wrote:

Just to update on this, after ~2 months, and multiple calls/chats to the support team, my card account was silently reinstated.

I had lodged a formal complaint regarding the situation – in particular regarding the runaround I was getting with the customer service team. The card account started working again about ~1 week after the complaint was lodged.

The complaint was upheld with a £ gesture of goodwill, but they couldn’t explain exactly why the card was suspended, or transactions were failing.

Hopefully this won’t recur, but for others it may be worth escalating to official complaint level, as the responses and information from the customer service team was useless. Hopefully this improves, as customer support was much better previously.

Were you satisfied with the £1 gesture of goodwill?