American Express and Citi may be the worse card companies to deal with.
Years ago I conducted focus groups in the meeting rooms of nice restaurants 3-4 evenings a week. The monthly bills for the dinners were often in the 5 figure range which were paid in full each month when I received the bill.
One time I had refund from one of the restaurants for an error on their part re my billing, and they credited AMX. The credit was received by AMX a couple of weeks before my bill was sent out by AMX.
I received the bill and the credit had not been applied. So I contacted them and subtracted the amount of the uncredited refund and paid the full bill, again over 5 figures.
AMX ended up charging me interest for the full amount as they said I hadn’t paid my bill in full. It took a couple of months for the credit to finally be entered by AMX. That cost me money that I didn’t owe them. My CPA said to over pay the next bill by 13.33 and never use the card again. She said that billing had to cost them a nice sum. That was my first experience dealing with someone in India on the phone. I never got an apology nor a refund for the insult and basic unarmed robbery on their part.
We’ve also had problems with AMEX. My husband’s employer has them use AMEX for expense account items. He is supposed to submit his expense account monthly and the payment goes directly to AMEX. He made the mistake of getting behind on his in-house paperwork and paid the AMEX bill from our personal funds before submitting his expenses for approval. When he submitted the corporate expenses, they also paid AMEX, so now AMEX has approximately $3,000 in overpayment on his account. He has tried repeatedly to get reimbursement from AMEX for the overpayment, and every time he talks to them, they seem unable to process the English language. Unlike you, he’s not talking to someone in India. He’s been talking to someone in Philadelphia. In his case, it appears to be a series of Affirmative Action hires who don’t know much and aren’t very willing. I’ve been bugging him about it, and now that I’m hearing rumblings (above) that AMEX may be in trouble, I’ll really insist on it.