David Lazarus at The Los Angeles Times asks a question I’ve been wondering about myself: What are some credit card companies thinking? Lazarus points
“„AmEx, which pocketed $3.4 billion in bailout cash from taxpayers, seems to have been especially successful at making customers feel unwelcome.
“„I wrote Sundayabout a Los Angeles man who had his AmEx credit limit slashed twice by the company and then had his card canceled, all because of a “serious delinquency” in his credit file that apparently no one but AmEx could see.
“„I’ve since heard from numerous others who related similar experiences, including some who said AmEx even demanded that they send in copies of their tax returns if they wanted to keep their accounts — a notion so outlandish that I was sure it had to be a scam.
“„And demonstrating that AmEx isn’t just pushing around middle-class cardholders, I spoke the other day with Beverly Hills resident James B. Davis, who runs a publishing company with about $16 million in annual sales. He said he holds three AmEx Platinum cards, one for personal use and two for business.
“„Davis, 61, recently received a letter from AmEx saying it was canceling a benefit allowing him to carry an extended balance on certain travel expenses. It said this was due to an unspecified problem with his credit file.
“„“I have no debt — zero,” Davis told me. “So I called up my credit file and went through all 40 pages of it. I kept seeing ‘Account in good standing,’ ‘Account in good standing.’ Every account was in good shape.”