Customer Credit Limits Cut By Amex
Credit card giant, American Express, is slashing credit limits for thousands of its cardholders. One customer who happens to be a millionaire had his card-spending limit reduced without an explanation. Some other cardholders have had their spending limits cut either without explanation or warning.
The company, which has around 500,000 cardholders in the UK, has so far refused to give any explanation for the cuts to customer spending limits.
As a result of the issuer’s actions, their call centres in both Brighton and India have inundated with calls from furious customers.
Ironically, many of the Amex customers affected happen to be extremely wealthy individuals. Financial Mail, part of the Daily Mail, has reported seeing paperwork relating to two customers showing that their credit limits have been cut by two-thirds. Both of the aforementioned customers appear to have unblemished credit records and have no history of credit repayment problems. These cases appear to be baffling when their credit records are taken into account.
Another case highlights a millionaire businessman who has property all over the world and has no mortgage, having his spending limit slashed.
The only information that Amex was willing to volunteer about this particular customer was that the decision to cut his limit was taken due to information stored on his credit record. However, despite having the customer’s consent to divulge more information, Amex was unwilling to provide further details on the matter.
Credit rating agencies, Experian and Equifax, revealed that this particular customer has a good to excellent credit rating.
Whilst abroad, the businessman saw his spending limit one Amex card reduced from £17,500 to £10,000 and other card saw a reduction from £11,5000 down to £4,000.
As a result of these inexplicable reductions in spending limits, the cardholder has hit the credit card giant where it hurts by cancelling his Amex cards and instructing his businesses to refuse all Amex card transactions.
Amex’s European boss, James Crotty, has found himself on the receiving end of outraged customers letters, receiving angry letters of complaints and in some cases the remnants of customers’ cards that have been cut up.
Contrary to information supplied by some of the affected cardholders, a spokeswoman for Amex said that all the affected customers would receive letters warning of the reductions. The spokeswoman added that the reductions applied to ‘a minority of cardholders’.
Alisdair Milton
24th October 2006
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