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Comment by naturalgradient | Hacker News Reader

I have noticed that with any type of money processing service (stock broker, bank, ..), whenever any irregularity happens, I end up losing money no matter whether I was at fault.

The asymmetry between me as a customer and a large organisation with a faceless customer service is just so big that complaints take too much effort to reach someone that could do something about it (if they were willing to own up to problems, which they usually are not).

Having the legal right to get any fee refunded and getting it are just so far removed that I would wager all money handling services make non-trivial amounts of profits from unjust fees because they can exploit this asymmetry.

Sadly, for me as an individual the right decision is almost always to let it go because my time is more expensive.

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The one company that hasn't totally sucked for me in this regard is AmEx. Every time I've called I've gotten a native English speaker located in the US who actually has the power to reverse charges within a matter of minutes.

This used to be the case - until I talked to them last time. Definitely not a US-based CSR, and completely unwilling to help in a very frustrating situation I had done almost everything right on. I don't charge back often (first time on this card ever, after close to a decade) - so it's not like I have a flag on my account for "shitty customer" or anything.

Basically they utterly refused to chargeback, or even block future charges to a specific vendor that had been charging me monthly for a service I could not use due to moving. The vendor said their policy was I had to cancel in person, and refused to do anything else.

Amex absolutely did not have my back, and I have one of their higher-tier cards. Absolutely have been looking around at alternatives now though, after basically being told they'll let a vendor continue charging me against my will forever and there was nothing they would do about it. They said take the vendor to court.

I ended up canceling the card entirely and having it re-issued, since even changing the number on your card these days isn't enough to stop monthly recurring billing - of course that feature is for your "convenience".

All in all it was a pretty horrible experience that they resolved in the favor of a vendor that was quite obviously playing the "make cancelation super hard so we can collect monthly payments from people who continue to put it off" game - Amex literally could not have cared less one of their merchants was essentially engaging in barely-legal consumer fraud.

Utterly horrible customer service, and this was via many reps and a couple low-tier CSR managers. It's quite obvious to me why Chase and the like are eating steadily away at the once-stalwart Amex customer base. Prior to that experience I would not have remotely considered a different card due to them always being stellar whenever I needed them, and they usually went above and beyond any expectations I had for customer service. That trust built over the decades with me is now completely gone, and it's obvious they are simply yet another card issuer these days.

I don't see them being at fault here. You willing entered into a contract.

Vendors who allow online or over the phone sign ups, but only in person cancellation don't tend to be relying on the quality of their product or service to keep customers.

ISPs are one where if you are not a savvy consumer you wont realize that when they say up to X megabits a second that its not only a different unit from megabytes, but that anything 0 <= (actual service) <= X is considered meeting the terms of the contract. ISPs are also the type of company where you call to cancel the service, as the contract allows because you are not locked in, and instead of letting you cancel they give you the run around and send you to person after person to try to keep you online.

While we don't know if OP was in the right here from this story, you must have at least _some_ ability to see where they could be at fault

I agree, them allowing me to chargeback would have been nice but I certainly understand why they would say otherwise. I was hoping to charge back and then meet the merchant in court when they sued, so I could also collect attorney fees in this case. It was egregious. But, I also understood that Amex may take your point of view. I didn't have a problem with this.

Them stating I can't stop future payments though has nothing to do with any third party contract that may or may not exist. It's not up to them to enforce that, and in any case I can assure you said contract did not list American Express as a payment method anywhere on it. They enabled a merchant to extort me because I had at one time years before made the mistake of giving them my Amex account number and the merchant purposefully made it impossible to remove.

That "you must cancel in person" level of shittiness is typical for things like gyms. California actually has a specific law dealing with these situations for gyms.

This was a gym, Lifetime Fitness to be exact. I was hoping to go to court over it, but they dropped their collection effort.

Admittedly I could have jumped through their hoops, but I was out of the country at the time and I'm the cut off my nose to spite my face type of person when it comes to companies pulling this type of bullshit. I refuse to jump their their hoops. Started off just wanting to cancel for 6-9 months until I returned to town, but they made the process so amazingly difficult I will never give another gym a dime of business. "Cancel gym membership in person scheduled weeks in advance" is not on most folks list of things to do prior to leaving town unexpectedly.

I did find it amusing the Amex CSR basically told me to book an international flight home to resolve the issue (which amounted to $100/mo or somesuch). I was honestly flabbergasting at the support they gave the merchant, having been an Amex merchant in the past. The vendor must have some strong notes attached to it for me to get so much pushback.

AmEx likely did this because gyms have lawyers that will win the chargeback cases. They'll just FAX over a copy of the contract with your signature on it. Thus, AmEx will end up eating the administrative cost of the chargeback. You are not the first, not even the ten thousandth, person to try to get out of a gym contract by using the chargeback process.

A described in an above comment, my recent experience was different from yours. It was however an online service, and I did initiate dialog with an email support agent who claimed to be 'resolving the issue', but then did not respond to follow up emails for two weeks. I wonder if mentioning the merchant had already claimed to be cancelling the service, then continued to charge installments made the difference?

Counterpoint: I haven't received a native English speaker in years from Amex. Chase, on the other hand, has always provided support in English and without the need to navigate a phone tree. I'll probably move most of my purchases to them once I spend my stockpile of Amex MR points.

Counter-counterpoint:

I keep getting random notifications that "my card has been removed from android pay" from Chase and always have to navigate a phone tree. What's this secret shibboleet code[1] you've found?

[1]: https://www.xkcd.com/806/

Several of Chase's credit cards come with that as an advertised feature. But not all of them, which means that it's not "Chase in general" but "Chase, if you have one of these specific cards with them".

I completely agree with you that this is the normal case and too many people really brush this off as business as usual. Just anecdotal, but Amazon actually has been extremely forthcoming with their service and has made right of every issue I've had with them.

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