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> People say companies like American Express are a scam

Have not heard this!

I agree with you: Amex is great at looking after their customers (card holders) and are so jealous about their info (for charge cards, don’t know about credit) that they share much less.

I do use visa for local small businesses (family restaurants etc) because the fee Amex charges merchants is higher than the others’. But especially online, their guarantees are worth it.

I got screwed in the opposite direction. I sold an online service with PayPal, delivered the goods (files to set up a web forum), only to have the client file a fraudulent chargeback claiming they never received the site files (they used the files to set up a successful site which they are still using; I pointed this out to the PayPal rep and they ignored it). I never got a cent and actually had a negative balance thanks to the fees.

It’s probably very hard to be PayPal, but the incident left a bad taste in my mouth. I no longer accept or send any transactions via their platform.

Had almost the exact same thing happen to me selling via EBay and PayPal.

The buyer said it wasn’t them that bought it, but they corresponded via EBay and sent payment via PayPal. The unauthorized user had both passwords?

PayPals response was basically that we just side with the buyer on all digital goods transactions.

I’m moving everything off of PayPal now.

I've heard a lot of complaints that Paypal staunchly sides with the customer over retailers. I think it's just that sometimes scammers beat the system, and Paypal is occasionally wrong in either directions.

I've bought and sold plenty on ebay using paypal exclusively and can't say my experience is the same. As a buyer, I know that opening a paypal dispute they'll side with me, and as a seller I know in screwed if the buyer does so. Two anecdotes - I bought a phone that was "new" and when it arrived it was locked to a carrier I wasn't on. I tried to get it unlocked officially, but apple or the carrier wouldn't help. Seller said no refunds. Paypal sided with me because they didn't explicitly put it in the correct ebay category.

As a seller, I sold a processor, listed it with 2nd class signed for postage and the buyer asked if I could ship it first class (next day vs 3-5 days). I said sure, paid the difference out of pocket and uploaded the tracking number. 24 hours later I got a paypal dispute saying item not received, that it wasn't sent by the right means. He had signed for it, I had the tracking. No dice, I was out a £200 part.

Paypal so heavily sides with the buyer in every scenario, it's why it's popular!

I think they're very inconsistent honestly. I ordered a 400 dollar item last summer, it was shipped by Fedex, and Fedex said they delivered it. I live in a house on a private drive way out in the country - nobody is porch pirating here. It never showed up. I tried to work with the seller but they never responded with anything other than the copy pasted tracking number. Ebay denied my claim saying that a tracking number proves delivery. PayPal did the same. Chase ultimately sided with me and processed the chargeback.

I've had other bizarre issues with Fedex as well, like the time they said they delivered a wrench but they didn't, then it showed up 6 weeks later after the seller had already sent me a replacement.

I think Fedex drivers sometimes just mark items as delivered that they won't get around to until the next day. I don't know how to explain it other than that. I've experienced the same thing (driver marked delivered, but it wasn't) and the package showed up the next day or two. Only with Fedex...

> Chase ultimately sided with me and processed the chargeback.

Doesn't this mean that both your paypal account and ebay account get locked? I know that if you issue a chargeback to amazon they lock your account until you give them another card to charge.

It does not seem to have been the case for me here, although I fully expected it to turn out that way.

> People say companies like American Express are a scam. But I can, and have in these instances just filed a charge back and walked. To the point that if a place won’t take American Express (like Costco) I’ll just move along.

I have never heard anyone say companies like AmEx are a scam in my 20 years as an adult.

And Visa/MasterCard/Discover all offer the same chargeback mechanisms AmEx does, so there is nothing special about AmEx.

And the craziest thing to me is thinking Costco’s extremely liberal return policies are inferior to a credit card network’s chargeback policies. You can get a refund for fruit at Costco if you don’t like the way it tastes. You can’t do that with AmEx.

I accidentally bought the wrong type of cheese, and they gave me a refund even though they had to throw it away due to the law not allowing them to resell returned perishable food items. (I didn’t find out they were throwing it away until the cashier already refunded to the card...otherwise I would have just kept the cheese).

Ive heard it multiple times. Mainly because there is a membership fee.

And I disagree about the chargeback process on visa/MasterCard. Ive only ever had to do it once. It took a very long time to open. The experience lasted close to 12 weeks and I had to appeal the finding a to a “manager” when the company I filed the chargeback with simply said “nah it’s valid” and visa attempted to find against it b

Even the initial call was a typical call center experience that took over an hour, and a couple long holds.

Amex has very good customer service. Ive never been on a hold for over 5 minutes that I can remember. And the few reports, fraud, chargebacks etc were very easy. They took everything up front and straight said “if you don’t hear back by x date, consider the matter settled”

I stopped shopping at costco for multiple reasons, mostly how other customers acted and how crowded chaotic it got. But then stopping Amex charges was the straw. I carry an alternative card just in case, but try to run all purchases through one so I have one bill to pay. I didn’t feel the need to chnage that process so I could buy bulk TP (which was mostly all we bought there). Even the gas lines are silly here.

FYI, Visa and MasterCard don’t handle chargebacks, they are simple payment networks. The bank that issued your card is the one you interact with for chargebacks. Your experience with one bank that issues Visa/MasterCard credit cards has no bearing on any other. I suspect there’s different level of customer service based on different annual fees, even at the same bank.

Yeah I think I said elsewhere I thought that may be the case.

I’m not really aware of another banks I’d prefer to deal with that is centered on customer service. Wouldn’t surprise me if there was.

We tend to use Credit Unions in general, but don’t hold credit cards through them.

Yes, the other cards say they have the same chargeback policies, but having used both extensively for years, I can say that AmEx is FAR better. No significant hold times, and very prompt response. One time I had a question about a charge that didn't even seem that off, and almost before I even finished my description, the rep was asking where I was, telling me that may card was cancelled and a new one would be out FedEx tomorrow - and it was. Apparently, that charge was some kind of serious red flag in their system.

Also, the AmEx points system usage and transferability is far better (although I've never found anything worthwhile in their own catalog.

Really key is that the availability of my historical data goes back for many more years than my bank or other cards. I don't often need it, but when I do need to find something from 4 years ago, it is really nice to have it.

While they sell their service on all the concierge-type services, I've never found those useful, but the disputes, points admin, and data availability are key differentiators for me.

I think AmEx has tiered service levels just like everyone else. I’ve tried Platinum and Hilton Aspire and Sapphire Reserve and other fee cards, and I don’t think AmEx is anything special, at least not anymore.

There was a promo last year where if you purchased $10+ at a non chain restaurant, you got $5 back up to 10x. I signed up for the promo using my account, which shows the AmEx card I used. But I never got the cash back, because technically, my wife owns the credit card, and I’m only the authorized user. So because I didn’t sign up for the promo using my wife’s online account, we didn’t get it. They wouldn’t even award me the $50 cash back even after escalating it to supervisors, and this is on $450 annual fee card, just because of a technical glitch.

I think AmEx started experiencing declines in profit and service levels 10 years or so ago when Chase and the other banks upped their offers for high annual fee cards, and AmEx had to respond by gaining more market share by attracting lower income customers with AmEx debit cards and no fee credit cards. I never thought I’d see the day when they would do that, since they had so long been the brand of the “upper classes”.

Yup, similar experience here w/the higher membership levels -- just wasn't as much value as expected. But the basic elements of 1) really good customer service w/typically zero hold times, 2) solid support for disputes vs the typical dismissive approach elsewhere, 3) long-term data availability (which is also a key Amazon feature), 4) points program that is really low-hassle and high usability, all make it worthwhile to prioritize AmEx, even with the basic level.

I'm also surprised that AmEx is going downmarket, but I suspect that has more to do with being able to keep merchants on board vs really wanting those customers.

You can use Amex points directly on Amazon purchases. Not the most efficient use but generally what I do.

However if you return an item bought with points you may have to call to have them refunded. Which isn’t a hassle but worth considering. I just only use them on something I’m very sure I won’t return.

AAAnnnd, I just went to AmEx to search for an old transaction about 3 years ago, and it's gone.

Poof.

Just records back about 18 months. Just like all the rest.

AmEx counts it's longstanding "members" as it's strategic assets, and used to have this great ability to search online records instantly. It is a GREAT customer-retention feature, and hot data storage has never been cheaper.

The longer a customer stays, the more valuable to them is being able to search all the old transactions. It is a key Amazon feature to be able to search all my old purchases over 20 years back.

Yet now, it is just like the rest. If I'm going to just lose everything in 18 months anyway (no, requesting and mailing old statement copies is no substitute), why not leave?

Corporate decisions are baffling

> To the point that if a place won’t take American Express (like Costco) I’ll just move along.

I understand the sentiment and I will use my Amex preferentially over any other card for the same reason. But it’s kinda funny to use Costco as the example. They have a famously customer friendly return policy.

Why not just visa if amex is not accepted? They offer (at least mine done) the exact same purchase protection and I’ve called up my bank and had charges reversed too.

I have ever only had to do one chargeback on a Bank of America Visa. I think it’s still visa I dealt with and the process isn’t bank/carrier specific but I’m not sure.

It was not fun. Took a very long time to open the case. Had to appeal a couple times and was a multiple week endeavor.

A trip to Denver was an eye opener. We rented a car and charged it on Amex. Denver has a very weird toll setup that camera/LP reader based and weeks after we returned we started getting charges trickling in for the tolls, totalling a couple hundred bucks. But we had paid for a toll pass with the rental co. I called them and got nowhere fast. I called Amex, sent them the rental agreement and they reversed the charges and said they would handle it. Never had to think about it again and it was about 20 minutes of my time, mostly spent chatting while the scan of the rental agreement was sent to them.

I still carry a visa for emergencies/just in case.

I don’t carry a debit card and haven’t for a very long time. Just run it through credit and pay in full at the end of the month. Basically the only thing we do with a bank is pay the bills or deposit/withdraw cash. We try to keep a degree of separation from what we spend on, and where we hold our money (if that makes sense)

Guess it’s different with American banks, I’m Canadian so might be different (I know our debit cards are often very different)

May I ask why you don’t carry a debit card? I find that very strange, how do you pull out money/purchase something at a store that doesn’t take either? Just avoid it?

what stores don't accept plastic?

I've only had a few recently as a way to recoup some of the increased pandemic costs, and they do venmo/zelle. which might be outside of the apps' TOS but not really my problem.

in canada quite a few stores (smaller corner stores or restaurants) do not take credit - debit or cash only because credit costs them too much in comparison. And in europe i've ran into it a number of times too.

The chargeback process is with the bank. Your takeaway from this should be that Bank of America has crappier customer service than AmEx, which matches every report I've heard as well as my personal experience.

Some premium cards have additional concierge features and your AmEx may have had that kind of thing re: the Denver experience.

> To the point that if a place won’t take American Express (like Costco)

Costco stands behind everything they sell. Other than electronics, they unofficially have a lifetime return policy for nearly anything.

This reminds me of an interesting story. A couple years ago I was trying to sell my broken x1 carbon laptop in ebay. I was looking for $400 and after posting and getting a few questions I realized I would not be able to close the sale because I had promised myself to never use PayPal again. So I removed my listing and contacted one of the users that got in touch. I tried to reason with him and explain that I would not deal with such a shady company but he denied my request (obviously) and said I could mail him the laptop and he would mail me back a $400 check. After thinking for a few minutes I decided to do just that and trust him. In my mind I'd rather give this laptop away (risking being conned) to somebody that will make some money out of its parts than give another cent to PayPal. About a week later I got my $400 and a message from him thanking me for trusting a stranger on the internet. Felt really good to stick to my gut and do something nice for a change.