Brad Ideas - American Express threatens me over joke on web site - Comments

Amex Baggage Insurance Scam

Vince — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 20:29:49 -0700

What a joke. They state you are covered for lost baggage as long as you pay for your ticket with the amex card. Well, there are loopholes they dont tell you.

Like you have to buy a full fare ticket not offset by any frequent flyer miles in whole or in part. You would not know this until you file a claim. I was told its clearly stated in its policy AX0400.

To date, I still cannot find that policy on the net.

Total Scam.

Now I wonder if I am really covered when I rent a car and waive the insurance at the rental counter.

Major Sponsor of Indian

Anonymous — Sun, 08 May 2011 17:41:01 -0700

Major Sponsor of Indian corruption. Head of their major outsourcing team was dismissed from Amex for alleged sexual harassment. He then proceeded to provide offshore benefits for Indian managers who could influence outsourcing expenditure. (Kickbacks) Several senior people arranged a big a check to keep silent and leave the company.

You are correct about

Anonymous — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 17:52:19 -0800

You are correct about corruption. After talking to the Ombudsmen and Employee Relations about some serious corruption, Amex fired me, in fact the corrupt leader called me and told me not to come into work the next day, without any reason. They gave me redundancy in exchange for a signature. So watch your back.

Indian Express is the name

Anonymous Coward — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 17:55:08 -0800

Indian Express is the name even some of there SVP's call it these days behind closed doors. Its like an Apathic Titanic blundering towards oblivion hoping a naive Ramanjuan will rescue there next bonus cycle.

Insider comment.

Anonymous Coward — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 07:32:40 -0800

The truth is they have offended some of the biggest names in technology, leaving there technical reputation in the toilet. They can only rely on mutual profiteering for a customer to get past their sales arrogance.

For a public company they sure treat there shareholders like crap, and their employee base is almost the who's who off fiscal incompetence. You can only agree that laying off 4000 US workers and accepting TARP, then giving big bonuses without the sign off of shareholders, is fiscal incompetence.

Legalized corruption at the highest levels. The corruption is so insidious. There is a business partner who has made billions to fund its fast following technologies, using Amex as its finance cartel. If you look at the two companies in the last 10 years, you not only find a series of federal gag orders over money laundering, insider trading, hedge fund fraud, hedge fund misuse etc......

Amex is on its way out as a US company, this is why its current executives have prefixed "Global" to their titles.

If you walked the isles of Amex today, you will only find unhappy employees, and the oblivious.

I work at Amex. You are

Anonymous — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 11:22:07 -0700

I work at Amex. You are right the place is full of Indians and many of the senior managers are indians. I know plenty of high quality americans out of work but they won't even consider them. Nope they just have another foreigner flown over for lower wages, no benefits, and scared to death to ever disagree with their treatment. The cafeteria has two different servings of Indian food every day which is no wonder because at least 80% of the workers are Indian. It's sickening and disgraceful. They should change their name to Indian Express. Where is the government enforcement of the H1-B labor laws?

To say that American Express

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:13:35 -0800

To say that American Express is not an American company is more correct than you may know. Over a decade ago they began tossing their American employees out and replacing them with Indian contractors who were brought to this country on work visas. They weren't taking jobs that Americans didn't want (if such a thing actually exists). They were taking good to high-paying technology and finance jobs. And, then it happened slowly but surely and unpredictable only to utter idiots. The contractors became the experts of the realm of their responsibilities and to ensure control over that expertise, the company hired them as employees. Indian non-managers became managers and then vice presidents and then senior vice presidents. Today, the average American would be hard pressed to readily pronounce the names of most of the resources who now occupy the offices and cubes at American Express' American sites. The best part is that they forgot to leave their discriminatory, classist beliefs at the airport. So, not only are these American sites run by non-Americans, the nature of the working environments is distinctly non-American. Manipulation, cronyism and oppression (particularly of women) reign. Our government leaders talk about job creation. How can they not know that simply by putting controls on H1B1 visas, they would make tens of thousands of jobs once again available to Americans -- the people who made this company and the people who still represent their greatest revenue pool?

Amex does drug testing

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:55:13 -0800

Amex does drug testing apparently because they prefer employees who are naturally stupid. Their leaders are as ignorant as they are arrogant and darn proud of it.

AMERCIAN EXPRESS BAD BAD BAD

Faye Francy — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:06:14 -0800

AMERICAN EXPRESS CREDIT CARD? TEAR IT UP. DO NOT BELIEVE THEIR COMMERCIALS. I cancelled an order in India within 24 hours, called and notified AmEx. Then I got the charge amount as $10K instead of the $1K. AmEx put the matter into dispute for months-nearly 18 months. I notified AmEx that this was an attempt to defraud, that I did not have the goods that were to be delivered in 4-6 weeks. They were not. And now AmEx has sued me for $10K!

We did and the goverment

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:04:48 -0800

We did and the goverment started funding them. So now they are back to there old ways

American Express What a Company

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:52:07 -0800

I have found myself in the same boat as many others. I guess American Express is trying to get rid of good costumers. I have had there card for awhile. I always pay it off right away. Was an easy way to get something I need right away and then just transfer money when I would get home.
Some how last month I had a $0.38 yes 38 cents balance. It was not paid so I got a $19.00 late charge and they want to up my intrest rate to 27% and put me on probation for 1 year.
I thought it was a mistake and called costumer service told me I had 2 options take it or leave it. Well I left it. I do believe that just wanted to get rid of me because they were not making any money off of me. I thought maybe I should have keep it and keep using it like I was paying it off right away.
But I thought do I really want to do busniess with a company like this. No
You might be reading this and say well it was just him or there is more to the story. But there is not and you just might be next.

A home in serious

pannhead51 — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:21:58 -0800

A home in serious delinquency? What exactly did you expect !?!?!?

I'm so done with American Express

JD Austin — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:14:36 -0800

I haven't been an American Express card holder for very long but thought having one was a good idea for the 'consumer protections' their cards are supposed to offer (gold card).

In September 2009 I booked a reservation on Expedia for a week long stay in a hotel supposedly near Leesville La (it was in Alexandria). Later when I discovered that it was really an hour away I tried to change my reservation; it was then that I found out that my reservation was non-refundable.

My first reaction was Wait a minute!.. I didn't see anything about that on Expedia's website! The robo-customer service human said oh, it's in the hotel rules.
So I pulled up the itinerary online. It wasn't on the checkout page but there was a link for hotel rules. I clicked on it.
I still don't see that it's non refundable; only that Super 8 charges a cancellation fee:

We understand that sometimes plans fall through. We do not charge a cancel or change fee.
However, Super 8 Alexandria I 49 has cancellation and change fees that we are required to pass on. See Super 8 Alexandria I 49 change and cancellation policies

So I click on the 'cancellation fee' link (we're now 3 levels deep) and that important detail is revealed in ***ultra fine print***:

This reservation is non-refundable and cannot be changed or cancelled.
Canceling your stay: Cancellations can be made online. From your itinerary, click the How to cancel this hotel reservation link and follow the instructions.
Changing your stay: To make changes, please call 1-800-EXPEDIA

Look for yourself (I printed the checkout page 3 times after drilling down): http://www.twingeckos.com/ExpediaSucks.pdf

I called up Expedia first nice and then irate. They refused to cancel the reservation and said the hotel was the only one that could do so. I tried at least 20 times to 'talk to the manager' to cancel and whenever I called (day and night) he was never 'available'. I ended up booking and staying in another hotel in Leesville (NOT on Expedia).

Anyway here's where AMEX comes in...
I call up and dispute the charges, they had an 'investigation', and 15 days later I get the result: since I didn't cancel the reservation I had to pay it.
I filed a second dispute providing the information above and they came to the same conclusion again.

I'm out almost $500 for a crappy hotel I never stayed in that was given 7 days notice that I wouldn't be staying there.
I closed my AMEX account today; if they can't protect me from being ripped off they're worthless.

AMEX costs more to have, costs more to accept, and I'll never use or ACCEPT AMEX for payment ever again.

Amex Blows

Mikey — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:51:55 -0800

Joel, your comments were quite harsh. Bragging about your fifty to a hundred thousand dollar spend doesn't do you any favours either. I owed American Express several thousand dollars and due to a car accident, I was unable to work, and therefore, unable to meet my financial obligations. Every other bank and financial institution that I owed money to was very understanding, not AmEx. They threatened me with bankruptcy. Not to be contented with refusing an offer of token payments until I am (hopefully) rehabilitated, they decided to hand my account over to a collection agency the very week that I was in hospital receiving treatment. I will one day when I am physically able to work again, if AmEx don't bankrupt me first, pay all my creditors back, but I really sincerely hope that they go bankrupt themselves and are not bailed out by the US government.

Response

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:18:11 -0700

Time for the red sharpie.... In your best and largest penmanship you should have written "FUCK YOU. Nasty letter to follow..." and returned it to sender!

American Express threatens me over joke on web site

brad — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 08:17:25 -0700

On my rec.humor.funny web site, I maintain the newsgroup archives, including this 13 year old joke entitled American Expressway.

Today I got one of those bullying "cease and desist" letters from American Express's law firm, ordering me to take down the joke for trademark infringement. Here's the text of the cease and desist

Do these guys know who they are trying to bully? I guess not, here's my response to them:

You can "Screw More" with an American Express Lawyer

Do you know me?

I built a famous company with a famous name, and then satirists made fun of me by taking advantage of the constitutional protections afforded parody when it comes to trademark law?

That's why I retained Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd, the "American Express Lawyers." Should you ever feel your reputation lost or stolen by free speech and satire, just one call gets LVM to write a threatening cease and desist letter -- usually on the same day -- citing all sorts of important sounding laws but ignoring the realities of parody. Most innocent web sites will cave in, not knowing their rights. LVM will pretend it has never read cases like L.L. Bean, Inc. v. High Society and dozens of others. There's no preset limit on the number of people you can threaten, so you can bully as much as you wish.