Thread: Amex fined for conveinance check problem

Saw this at the end of last month. American Express has been charged a hefty fine of half a million plus refunding around 3.5 mil in charges it made on customer's accounts. It doesn't sound like the problem was intentional at all, bur rather one of those "oops we forgot to think about that" type situations.

Basically what happened is they sent out their routine convenience checks (the ones I throw in the shredder) and of course on those they have an interest rate and tell you that you can write checks up to X number of dollars from your credit line. Now here's where the problem is: because of the economy, as you know most banks are slashing credit limits. Amex slashed credit limits on cards after these checks had been sent out. But the checks still said customers could write up to their credit limit of X dollars. Problem is that now that credit limit was no longer valid. So some customers ended up using these checks only to find out later that the checks have been rejected because their limits have been cut.

American Express Fined for Convenience Check Changes (Update1) - Bloomberg.com