Merchants Message Board - The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum

Merchants Message Board - The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=merchants Merchants Message Board - The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum en-us The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum Fri, 24 May 2013 09:35:45 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 30 Random review UNFAIR http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1291745961 The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum/Merchants Message Board http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1291745961 Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:19:21 +0000 Amex contacted me and said that they need to review my account.  I have been a user for 2.5 years now and pay my balance to $0.00 every month!  They continued, they would need tax returns and two years of profit and loss statements.  I asked how this was determined and the answer was that it was "random".  I mentioned the point that there are thousands of business that are in hardship and even in default and encouraged them to have a system where they reviewed those files and not harrass me.  They said that I could decline offering this additional information but that the review would still happen, just without additional info, but only with my payment history.  And, payment history is great!  Then two weeks later I receive a notice teling me to call them or my service will be interupted!  This makes no sense, to have a GREAT Client jump through hoops when my account it is perfect standing.  I am extremely dissappointed in their process.  Merchant BEWARE! Are merchants happy with the Amex card? http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1127804163 The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum/Merchants Message Board http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1127804163 Sat, 22 May 2010 06:36:06 +0000 American against AMERICAN EXPRESS.  15+ being a good customer. the last 30 days of their service was something that ruined my customer relationship with them. 1- I do not recommend it to anyone. 2-the gold card is the worst . one pays an annual fee . for what? 3-Remind them we tax payer bail  their company from financial disaster. 4-finally what a dissapointment. SHAME ON AMERICAN EXPRESS   <img src="http://www.amexsux.com/yabbfiles/Templates/Forum/default/sad.gif" border="0" alt="Sad" title="Sad" /> Merchants should accept all Cards http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1129163344 The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum/Merchants Message Board http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1129163344 Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:37:56 +0000 Actually, Amex only charges small businesses high fees to accept Amex cards.  The big companies like Costco get charged close to nothing to take Amex cards.  It's the 'mom and pop' places that pay through the nose to take a card belonging to a company who would rather stab you in the back than send you your hard earned money.   The Missing $44,480 http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1207702536 The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum/Merchants Message Board http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1207702536 Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:33:04 +0000 You're never gonna see that money.  I worked for Amex for 10 years before I was turned into a sacrificial lamb and walked (despite the fact that the HR guy (Tushar Das) told me to my face that I wouldn't lose my job.  One of my last responsibilities was to rip off the merchants.  Call it Merchant Services if you want but I was instructed to hold every penny that looked like we might be able to put back in the coffers for the shareholders.  Amex will do whatever they have to to avoid paying their merchants.  They don't care about you.  They never have and never will.  I read recently that Amex's shares dropped 38% and I laughed my ass off!  looks great on them.   $9250 in Limbo http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1173521394 The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum/Merchants Message Board http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1173521394 Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:04:16 +0000 Did you ever get your money? T-Mobile (Parody - sort of) http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1190859116 The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum/Merchants Message Board http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1190859116 Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:11:56 +0000 Hey, we, as a huge corporate entity just love Amex! You make it so easy for us to take advantage of innocent consumers (suckers). After all, we are really in business foremost to make money, not to provide good customer service. So I guess we and Amex are two peas in a pod that way. You see, we have an intentionally diabolical billing scheme designed to rip off as many people as we can, and Amex is a very helpful partner. If someone stays several nights at a hotel where we offer the exclusive online service, our rate is $12 per night but only $39.95 for 30 days. Most people just buy the month because after 4 nights you come out ahead even if they never bring a laptop to Starbucks. We automatically renew the charges monthly even though you do not want to go beyond the month. In fact, if you tell us right from the beginning you don't want more than 5 days, we intentionally ignore your request, directing you to cancel after you leave the hotel. Then, if you call us up later to confirm you do not want to continue, we conveniently do not log the request. Especially if we know you charged it on Amex. Why? Because, now we got you! We can suck $39.95 of charges out of your Amex card each month, with no risk to us whatsoever. We want your money. That is our purpose, to take it from you, even if you do not even receive our services. Amex is not consumer-centric. We use that to our advantage. It may be months before there is an Amex employee competent enough or caring enough to start to straighten out your account. By then we have stolen a nice little chunk of your money that we won't give back to Amex. We just refer everybody to our sleazy fine print T&C's where we clearly spell out our recurring charges without your request, (pretending to not know it wasn't authorized) and furthermore we unilaterally state that by you accepting our services you agree to never sue us in court, and you hold us harmless for any "inadvertent" mistakes we might make. Amex knows the only alternative is to then extort the money from the cardholder. Do you think that either we or they care that you never authorized the charges? We'll just try and intimidate you to pay by threatening your credit. Our sleazy T&C was crafted to screw the public and attempt to extort money from you, knowing that you really have no consumer protection at all, (ha ha, buyer beware and all), and we have our CYA down to a science. We could care less about you. We just want your money. Amex respects that too, as we are each like minded. Show me the money and hand it over. It's like a stickup without the gun. Hehehehehe! Special Information Merchant Accounts http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1169082730 The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum/Merchants Message Board http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1169082730 Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:12:10 +0000 Merchant Processing International is a registered agent for Visa/MasterCard. Unlike the majority of processors nationwide that are padding surcharges, we are able to discount processing fees, cutting your cost for accepting credit card. We do this for virtually every type of business in the United States.   You do know that you are more than likely being charged junk fees and back end surcharges…on top of the discount rate… right? This results in a substantially higher cost to your business/company  for accepting credit cards. Your discount rate is just a base rate for certain qualified transactions.  It is not your overall effective rate….in other words it is not your TRUE cost. The real savings come in…by eliminating the trumped up bogus fees they are hitting you with on the back end. We will provide a side by side comparison of what you SHOULD be paying compared with what you are currently being charged (cost analysis of your statement). What if you could save 10% - 20% a month on merchant processing costs with no effort on your part by providing you with even better, easier services than you are receiving now? Would that be worth a few minutes of your time? Our company is the fastest-growing merchant processor in America and has established relationships with banks that process more than $25 billion a year. We have saved our average customer more than 10-20 percent in fees and should be able to provide a similar savings for you. Most businesses today need to accept credit cards because this helps significantly increase revenue. Many customers find checks inconvenient and are more likely to use services of companies that accept credit cards. More than 80% of companies with businesses like yours accept credit cards and we can help you be more competitive. We offer: Competitive rates and excellent funding sources with a leading financial institution. We’re a registered agent for Visa/MasterCard. We’re flexible and can place 99.9% of all merchants with an account – regardless of merchant type, size, or credit risk. And we also offer leased terminals, which helps the merchant get started with no upfront or out-of-pocket costs. We provide online reporting, fast service and 24x7 support, electronic check processing by phone and many other advantages. And in many cases we can use your existing equipment to provide processing services. Or, as stated above, we have options that allow you to lease equipment with no upfront costs. Larry P.S. We also provide cash advances to small to mid size businesses. Visit Us Now At: <a href="http://www.BankMPI2623.com" target="_blank">www.BankMPI2623.com</a> Charge back/amex service http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1165436393 The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum/Merchants Message Board http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1165436393 Wed, 06 Dec 2006 13:19:52 +0000 Hi Merchants, We have had a charge back of roughly $3600, and Amex keeps telling us they are reviewing the file. It goes back to April/06, when a customer claimed his card number was used fraudulently. The sales associate that made the transaction is not with us any longer, but we pieced together the details over time. The card was in presence, Amex admits to having a record of it being swiped in our store, we have the customer signature on the print out, full amex authorization/approval on the transaction, and have documented the business for them. Amex gave the customer the charge back without informing us; I guess basing their decision on the paperwork we submitted. We found out when they started calling asking us to pay the balance owed! They called 3 times, each time they called we told them we are in the appeals process, each time we had to repeat our version of events, each time they listen to us, and say they will look into it and get back to us. They never do. Finally after 6 months go by, we speak to the supervisor of this department, and she agrees with us that they have not responded well to us, and agrees that we should not have had this chargeback. I figured all along that sooner or later someone at Amex would see the sense of our argument and refund us, I told her this, being as gracious as possible about their screw-up, saying that all businesses make errors, and we're just glad they finally caught this one. This supervisor, Vanessa Franklin by name, assures me that she will get back to me the same day, and she will fax a detailed statement of what she has told me on the phone. Guess what, no fax, no phone call. No surprise really, I'm sorry to say. Amazing how horrible this experience has been, I don't think we have ever had a worse business to business experience. We call Vanessa Franklin; leave messages, she doesn't return our calls. In the mail today, Amex sends a letter canceling our card service, and demands payment of the balance. Wow, it just keeps getting worse! Amex seems to protect the identity of their executive staff from the public. I'm thinking that if we can reach some of these higher level people someone somewhere is going to correct this nightmare of incredibly bad service. I can write a lot of letters to various ombudsmen, government officials, and the like when $3600 is involved. I was wondering if anyone on this forum might have some contact info for some of these management, or maybe some idea about how to go about reaching them? Thanks to the management of this forum for presenting this valuable resource! Looking around the internet, it seems their are a lot of con artists who are aware of Amex charge back policies. It's no secret, from what I have read, that Amex is not working well with their partners to make business safer from fraud. It could be argued that they encourage this fraud by not developing tighter processes for dealing with it. We do an awful lot of business, most of it by credit card. We also use credit cards extensively; Amex will never again see one cent of this business, a very substantial number indeed. I still have trouble believing they are willing to write off this business, and hope that I can reach someone at Amex management who will see reason. Charged Back Full Recourse $1200 http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1165249286 The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum/Merchants Message Board http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1165249286 Mon, 04 Dec 2006 09:21:26 +0000 Hello Guys, I woke up this morning, and like every single morning, I check my Online Merchant Account with AMEX. Now today I got 4 chargebacks from the same cardholder, totaling $1200. This purchases were made on November 15 and 16. Ok so I called Amex to see what had happen. The lady couldn't help me, she said that I was in a full recourse program and if a customer calls back amex and states the the charges are fraudulent, I will get debited automatically. Bottom line is that the amex lady said that the cardholder sais they made a copy of her amex card and they used at my store. I have a retail store, and I sell phone cards. I told them that in order for me to release merchandise, a costumer have to come to the store and swipe their card. Even like that, amex keep saying that the charges are fraudulent, and there is nothing I can do about it. I don't know what to do, I been with amex for a month only and I already don't like them. That is not fair, and I didn't even get the chance to respond and show them the signed receipts. nothing. Any help please, any advise on what to do? Thanks Hector AMEX unfair business to Merchant http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1151538984 The Unofficial American Express and Ameriprise Financial Advisors Consumer Opinion & Reviews Forum/Merchants Message Board http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1151538984 Thu, 07 Sep 2006 13:47:07 +0000 <a class="message" href="http://www.amexsux.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1151538984/0#0">GingerL wrote</a> on Jun 28th, 2006, 5:56pm: <div class="quote" style="width: 90%">On 5/31/06 I get a telephone request from another city for a purchace. The Purchace is for $1,500.00 The transaction goes through clean on my machine. The person who did the purchace by phone was having someone come and pick up the purchace and would not have the credit card present. So I called in to American Express to Authorize by telephone. The representative informed me that it was a good card and with the information I gave her it was a clean sale. The Purchace was picked up. I took a copy of his drivers licence an got his signature on my purchace agreement. and an address where the purchace was going. I get a call 1 week later. A man informing me he did not make the purchace. He claimed identity theft. I called the police and was informed there was nothing I could do until I was charged back. I then called the Suposed Card holdern back. I informed him I had a working telephone number that the purchace was made off of. a photo copy of a drivers licence, and the purchace was micro-chipped. The Card owner informed me that her and her husband were not going to make a police report. I stated this involved $1,500.00v that a live animal was involved. She said she did not care it was not her problem. That they used American Express so they would not have to call the police. I tried coaxing her with reason. She got very irate so bad I had to hang up the phone. I contacted AMEX with my concerns. The merchant representaive stated herself it was highly unusual that a client with identy theft had no concern to involved the police. I asked that an AMEX investigator contact me as soon as possiable. I was told I would be contacted in 48 hours. I stressed I had evidence that would catch the perp. 2 days go by, no telephone call from AMEX. So I call back . I get another merchant representative. I was told I should know that a customer with identity theft was not required to contact the police. I was also told there was no AMEX investigators and I would not be called. I told her my story again and how I called to authorize the card. she then tells me I should have called another number and to use it in the future. By this time I had ripped all AMEX signs out of my store. I then ask what was going to happen. I was told a letter would come and I was to respond to it. She stated from what I told her chances I would get charged back were promising in my favor. So I awaited the letter. I get it 6/19/06 so I fax them my responce with the purchace order, the photo ID copy the telephone number. 11 pages worth. I call AMEX to conferm they got it. I was told to fax again and wait a few days . my responce time was until 7/7/06. I called AMEX on 6/26/07 I am told they still did not get my fax. I am told to fax it again and call back in 3 days. So I fax a third time. For some reason I decided to call back the next day 6/27/06 at 6pm. I am told they recieved my fax but the card machine reciept was a little light and asked if I could fax that back. I informed the woman that was how it came out of my machine. She said thats ok. She then says well they charged you back the $1,500.00 last night. I said excuse me. She said it again and confirmed they already charged me back. I was told before that happened I would be informed. She said well we just sent the notice out today you will get it soon. I said noone called me how can you do this. She said well you had no signature on your reciept. I said excuse me it was a phone sale. She said well AMEX decided that because of no signature your getting charged back. I said even though I made a second authroization by telephone. She again repeated her stupid statement. I hung up on her and called my bank. I put a stop on all AMEX transactions. Then I called back AMEX and had my word with them. Now this repesentaive was very kind as I was going off on her she said yes mam I am so sorry mam. I feel AMEX aids and abeds Identy theft and cardit card fruad by thier lax way of dealing with it. leaving it up to the merchant. I am not sure if my story is unusal or not. But I personaly will never do business with that company again. I did everything in my power as a new merchant to insure it was an honest transaction. A month has gone by and the trail is cold. mybe to the card holder and AMEX $1,500.00 is not much money . But to this new business person its a moutain. </div> I'm glad Sue was helpful to you. She was to me too the first time around. Mine was a $20k+ chargeback that was clearly fraudulent on behalf of the cardmember. AmEx opened the case against their own policy of only doing so with "new" evidence. Nothing new was presented, yet they reopened the dispute. When we called them on it, she got pretty cold with us and told us that we could only see the cardmember correspondence with them if we presented a court order! How can you defend yourself on a chargeback attempt when you can't even see the fraudulent evidence that the cardmember has manufactured! They charged us back for the $20k+ and when we asked if they were going to revoke the rights of the cardmember they said "no!" Amazing. The scary thing is that that same cardholder has another $60k with us that they're disputing as well! We're a small business and this is devastating! They really do turn a blind eye to credit card fraud on behalf of their cardmembers. The merchant always loses