Posted on 02/23/2009 11:34:47 AM PST by COUNTrecount
Well, this sure is a different kind of deal. Instead of paying you a bonus to join, New York-based American Express will give you a $300 American Express prepaid card if you agree to say goodbye. American Express says that it is making this "deal" so that customers can "simplify" their finances. Sure. The offer, which isn't available to everyone, requires a 14-digit RSVP code. Customers are receiving this offer via U.S. Postal and email.
Let's get something straight here. If you receive this offer, American Express is telling you something: please leave. Note also that in order to get the $300 prepaid card the customer MUST pay off his or her entire balance by April 30, 2009. If the balance is not paid off by April 30, then you will not receive the $300 card. But your card will still get closed. That's a heck of a deal.
You may be wondering why American Express doesn't just close the accounts of these customers, which would save American Express $300. Here's why: the $300 prepaid card is acting as an incentive for the customer to pay down the balance in an expeditious manner. The customer has exactly two months to get that balance paid off; if he or she does, the $300 card is theirs. Not a bad strategy by American Express.
The "we want to help you simplify your finances" language is a joke, of course. But, hey, this is American Express. It has never really been good at this sort of thing.
Anyhow, be on the lookout for the offer. If you receive the offer, be sure to let me know. I'd like to see what kinds of balances are being targeted here.
Here is a direct link to American Express's offer (link).
So, you transfer you AE balance to a visa citi card, and get your 300 bones. Then a month later you apply for a new AE card.
Then start all over again.
I kinda hope I get one.
I opened an AmEx Business card because they gave me a $150 bonus, no interest for a year, a couple of years back. The card doesn’t report on my FICO score, so it’s no penalty to lose it.
With a total of $450 cash back, I think it’d have been a great deal.
I saw this mentioned somewhere else too. Really odd. Presumably they’re only making this “offer” to cardholders whose credit profiles suggest trouble in the near future, but the ones who can actually come up with the cash to pay off their balances would certainly be very disproportionately from the subset who would NOT end up having trouble paying. So AmEx would end up blowing $300 a head to get rid of good customers, and be left with all the ones who have no way to pay off their balance even to get a $300 cash gift.
Will they pay out my reward points?
People who get the letter and don’t pay off the balance lose their cards anyway - and AmEx will be writing off the balances. I presume if these were good clients to begin with, they would not be getting the letter. What they are attempting here is to rise to the top of the priority list of debtors, a rather moot point. If people could pay up, they would.
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Which Amex cards are these...not the basic green card...that has to be paid off every month..
I actually just applied for a AMEX business card. My wife took a regular card out 8 months ago for 50K free points. I took one out in November for another 50K points. Just sent the business one in today for yet another 50K bonus points. They all had the annual fee waived for one year then the three total $425 per year. You need 160K points for a family of four to fly to Hawaii and I have the points already. I simply don’t know how they make money short of me staying around for 10 years. I’m looking at $2500 in airfare for $425. I live for the miles offers.
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The retarded part is that none of the deadbeats they’re trying to get rid of can (or would) pay off their balance.
The type of person who would actually do this is the type of customer they want—someone responsible enough to be creditworthy.
No new charges allowed, yes. Balance written off, no. From the "Terms and Conditions":
"2. If the entire balance is not paid prior to April 30, 2009, you will not receive the $300 value prepaid card and you must continue to make at least your minimum payments until your balance is paid off."
I don't either, and this realization may be coming to them. There's talk of them leaving the credit card business and going back to what they used to do.
Makes me wonder if they’re on the verge of going belly up; and their Ameriprise group too.
what? You would steel from me?
Why?
You dirty stinking lowlife crook.
Don’t bet on it. A/E has gone rather mad with it’s gold card lately. I did about $25k business with them in 2007. I made one late payment, between 24 and 48 hours late. Months later they put a limit on the card. It was the first of December. I reduced the amount I put on the card, and just as mysteriously they took the limit off. In 2008 I did about $13k worth of business with them. With no late payments, I had another limit put on the card around the first of December. This year we’ll probably do about $2k business with A/E.
I’ve had charges of up to $5k in one month on the card several times, and a number of them in excess of $3.5k. These large balances were paid off on time.
Evidently they don’t want my business, because they have all but made it clear they are not a reliable business partner.
I’ve had the card since 1987.
there is a reason blackstone (formerly Amex’s investing house) is one of the worst.
Some people, like my husband and I, are not deadbeats. We transferred our auto loan to the AMEX Blue Card because the interest rate for balance transfers was 2.9% until the balance was paid. We pay the same amount each month that our car payment was, which is greater than the minimum, and they screwed us last month by slashing our credit limit by thousands of dollars. This will hurt our credit score at the very same time we are applying for a mortgage. AMEX can bite me.
Amex is like the federal government.
Reward those that scr*w*d up.
How about all of us who pay our bill on time every month?
What are we going to get, higher annual fees?
Your case is similar to mine. I took advantage of a balance transfer offer at 3.99% for the life of the loan, never got around to actually using my Blue card for daily purchases(which would have accumulated tons of interest charges while I was paying down the promo balance).
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