I have an American Express Bluebird card which I used mostly at times of travel. I was travelling with my girlfriend, so we decided to lodge at this hotel, which had the policy of charging $100 a night as a ‘security deposit’. So everyday I got my card swiped for the deposit, which in turn blocked almost $1000 on my card as we decided to have a 10 day vacation. The hotel payment was supposed to be made at the end of the stay, after we checked out.
At the last day, while we were checking out I made the hotel payment using the American Express bluebird card, and the money was deducted then and there. But when I checked my account, I realised that the $1000 that were cut as ‘security’ had not been returned to my account. All the more that money was blocked, but after I checked out, I realised the money was debited from my account. I contacted the hotel, thinking they might be the ones stealing from me, but I was wrong. It was American Express. They charged me so much extra, for no reason.
When I decided to call American Express and talk to them about my card and relative accounts, they told me to hold on, for which I stayed 30 minutes on the time, with no response. After the long wait for 30 minutes I finally spoke to them, and all they told me was the merchant, the hotel guys were holding my money, but because I had already spoken to them, I cleared out my doubt. They re-checked and told me the money had been transferred here and that they would send it back again. Days and days passed but I never received a $1000 in my account, I also contacted them several times but the only response I got was they needed a special tool to deal with this or there was a particular person who would deal with such issues but that person had gone on a vacations.
Well, because of this lovely bluebird card, this vacation was heavy on my pocket, if not anyone else. Surely. So now I was here, trying hard to get $1000 back into my account, but failed at every step. I stopped using my bluebird card, they clearly are fraud. They charged me so much for no reason, and that’s a shame for a company like American Express.