So We Cancelled a Stack of Amex Cards Last Weekend….

American Express Cards

We had a busy MLK holiday weekend.  Beyond the kids’ activities, we watched way too much football and spent a lot of time with Amex reps – that last pair often simultaneously.  Indeed, between the two of us, my wife and I closed a number of American Express cards last weekend.  These were cards across Amex’s portfolio, including personal, business, credit, pay over time, and cobranded cards.  I’ll save the cards we closed and why for a different article down the road.  Today, I’m checking in with a few trends we noticed over the weekend.

Chat Is Still The Way

In the fall, I described recent Amex chat unreliability when I tried to upgrade cards.  Calling in got the job done, and in a refreshingly time-efficient manner.  But when it comes to card cancellations, our own organization, and desired recordkeeping, Amex chat is still our preference.

Perhaps this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but since we so often take care of this business via chat, the interactions generally have a predictable rhythm and flow.  We’ve purposely avoided retention offers, valuing our Amex slots more than such bonuses.  This makes the conversation simpler and more concise.  Speaking of being quick, I’m happy to report an update on one of my favorite Amex moves.

Do Business on the Weekends

Amex business card retention is still closed on the weekends.  For those like me who don’t want a retention offer, anyway, this cuts out a layer of reps from the conversation.  Last weekend, a rep or two suggested I wait a few days to talk to the retention team, but I kindly insisted I wanted to immediately cancel the account.  Reps quickly obliged.  But as I recall, most reps didn’t even mention putting off the cancellation; they took my initial requests at face value and promptly cancelled the cards.  I’ll continue saving this work for the weekend until further notice.

Only One Failure to Cancel American Express Cards

Out of all interactions, only one required a follow-up chat session.  Eleven cards quickly reflected cancellation in our online accounts, but one did not.  The weak link was one of mine.  I reopened a chat session and reviewed history.  During the previous conversation, the chat rep confirmed he cancelled the card.  I then recontacted and received a new agent.  It’s not that Amex was slow to process the cancellation – it turned out the card was not cancelled at all.  The account was still open!  At any rate, the second rep was helpful enough, cancelling the card without starting the whole conversation over/trying to talk me into keeping it/etc.

While the cancellation process was annoying in this one instance, we were satisfied overall.  Successfully cancelling all but one without the need to recontact was a pretty solid performance by Amex chat reps.

Patience Is Key

Styles may vary, but my wife and I prefer to cancel one card per chat conversation.  I know some like the productivity of cancelling multiple in the same discussion, but we personally like the clean beginning, middle, and end with single transactions.  However, this also means we deal with a lot of different chat agents with vastly different speeds of doing business.  So, while I generally avoid multitasking, I happily did it in another window while cancelling cards.  As I mentioned, the NFL playoff games were quite timely here.  I’m still confounded at how long certain processes can take, but I try to take it in stride, generally biting my lip.  That leads me to my next point.

Let It Go

Despite my overall preference for Amex chat reps, I’ve found that they make more mistakes than phone reps.  Of course, this is tremendously anecdotal, and many of you may have different experiences.  But I routinely notice chat reps talking about the wrong  cards even though I always specify the card type and last five or six digits at the beginning of the conversation.  Amex doesn’t do their reps or customers any favors here, though, since they assign the same last five digits to many of my cards.

Still, I can’t help but notice how discombobulated Amex chat reps can become.  In these instances, I focus even more on just the facts, letting the reps untie the knot from there.

Technology’s great, until it isn’t.  I’ve occasionally noticed that reps and I are unintentionally talking past each other in ways which wouldn’t happen over the phone.  From time to time, I even confuse myself during an Amex chat.  Things might take longer than expected here and there, but overall, I’m able to accomplish my goals via chat.

American Express Cards – Conclusion

We didn’t have a long-orchestrated plan to cancel this many American Express cards in a single weekend.  Things just turned out that way.  I doubt we’ll be here again any time soon, if ever.  For what it’s worth, though, I appreciate the economy of scale with such processes.  Next, the real fun begins – more new Amex cards!  I have a few ones on my list for near-term and closer to the middle of the year.  I look forward to digging into those in separate articles.

Until then, though, how has your experience been lately cancelling American Express cards via chat?