Amex Chat Error
I noticed that American Express decided to update their chat function over the last week or so. The new set up seems to have some positives to it that I will discuss a bit later. The biggest one though, for me at least, is it corrected the Amex chat error, or glitch, that had been going on for a month or so.
Update 3/14/22: What was fixed is now broken again. Today I fired up chat to perform a card downgrade and anytime I switch tabs with chat open I was logged out. Even opening it in a new window and going to a different window now logs me out. The only thing that works is doing a split screen with two windows if you wanna work while waiting for chat agents to respond.
Amex Chat Error Details
I noticed several weeks back that the Amex Chat function kept logging me out of my Amex account. It was happening non stop and it was driving me absolutely nuts. I was trying to close my Amex Green Business card because the $95 annual fee had just posted. My wife and I each grabbed one of these a year ago for the welcome offer. The card doesn’t offer much in terms of long term value so it was time to go. It is honestly in need of a major refresh, like the personal Amex Green card just had.
I kept logging into my Amex account and firing up the Amex chat function. I would put in my details and then hop over to do some work for a bit while I waited for an Amex rep to join me. Whenever I would come back I would be logged out of my account. It didn’t matter if it was a few seconds or several minutes, logged out. Even when I would get through some dialogue with the rep it would happen. At first I thought it was because they really didn’t want to close my account. But, after talking it over with people on our internal MtM work slack we figured it out. Whenever I would move between tabs Amex would log me out. I was working on Google Chrome, I am not sure if it was an issue across all browsers or not.
Once we figured it out it was a simple enough fix. I would just open a new window with no other tabs and then go back and forth between the windows with the Alt + Tab shortcut. Even though I knew it was an issue I would find myself still tab hop from time to time. It is hard to break habits after all! Well, I did it again last week but this time it didn’t boot me out. It appears the Amex chat app had been refreshed and had a couple of new features that I liked.
New Amex Chat Features
Outside of fixing the annoying Amex chat glitch there are a couple of new features that I like with the refresh. First off, there is an alert if you have an unread message. It blinks orange and blue and has a number in red for missed messages. Similar to what you see on your cellphone. I think this is a nice little feature in case you ended the chat early etc. it lets you know the rep had sent you something else.
Going along with ending the chat early theme, I have noticed you get reconnected to the same rep most of the time now when it happens. In the past if I would get logged out or would forget to go back quickly enough to the chat I would have to pretty much start over. Now, you continue the chat right where you left off. This is a nice feature since I often get sidetracked or Amex will annoyingly log me out. It always seems to happen right when I am about to confirm something too! I even logged out and logged back in on purpose to see if I would get connected to the same chat / rep, and I was. That is a nice improvement.
Lastly, the Amex chat bot can take care of some things for you now too. They have been adding to this for a while now but it seems to be more prevalent in the updated version.
Final Thoughts
If you are addicted to tabs, like I am, then this is a great change for you too. Constantly getting logged out of my Amex account while waiting for an Amex chat rep was annoying. Even though there was an easy workaround I found myself falling into the same trap often. Now I don’t have to worry about that anymore.
On top of fixing the Amex chat glitch I am glad to see a few new improvements to the Amex chat interface. Being alerted to missed messages, and being reconnected to the same rep if you are kicked, is a nice addition. I also love that they allow you to get retention offers via chat now too. They added this during the pandemic.
The front line reps will even alert you that there is an offer on your account if try to cancel. They are unable to tell you what the offer is but they are alerted that one exists before closure. You still need to be connected to a retention specialist on the chat before you get the offer though. The Amex chat retention rep’s hours are the same as if you called in so be aware of that.
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You may be able to fix the Amex issue by installing a chrome or firefox extension, “Disable automatic tab discarding.” Discarding is a stupid/genius feature of modern browsers to save memory, and I could see how it might cause Amex to log you out.
Thanks Nun – I’ll give it a try
[…] Amex’s Annoying Chat Glitch Is Back & Worse Than Ever […]
what if you don’t want to same retention rep? I keep getting conneted to the same one even though I log off and log back in. I even disconnected chat
Probably need to try later / a different day then
This logout glitch had been happening for well over a year. I’ve never hada chat make it more than 5 minutes. Clicking any link the rep went was an automatic log out. Changing tabs was an automatic logout. Opening two tabs to Amex so one could be used to navigate would logout the other tab. I’ve been complaining to Amex about it since at least June 2020.
The last time I contacted Amex chat was a couple weeks ago, so I really hope it’s fixed now.
You should hopefully be good!
Now if only they could fix the issue that removes Amex offers when they’ve been added to another card.
I typically dump all of my crap offers on my Bonvoy Biz just to clear the list when looking at other cards. Now even if added to another card, the offer still shows under “available” making the list extremely long and it looks as though there’s always 100 offers available…that is until you actually click on it and then it tells you that the offer has already been added to another card.
I find this as annoying as the auto logout issue.
Amex needs to stop acting like Citi and get it together!
Hopefully that is next up. I wonder what is causing it since it used to work for me. There are so few Amex offers I use now that I have to admit I don’t do it anymore so haven’t run into that.