Charge it
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008While talking to my brother today about my American Express card, I ran across something in their frequently asked questions that I’ve been trying to find:
What if a merchant does not accept my American Express Card?
To report incidences where merchants do not accept your American Express Card, please click here. American Express Customer Service will then follow up with the merchant to ensure that American Express Cards will be accepted in the future.
While I like the idea of encouraging merchants to accept AmEx, I’m really curious how they “ensure” it. My guess is they send around a couple of hired goons to make sure the merchant agreement gets signed, but I could be wrong.
What I really like, though, is that one of the options is “Merchant insisted on a minimum/maximum purchase amount”. It’s been a while since I’ve run into this, but I find it to be terribly obnoxious when I do (and it’s against every merchant agreement out there). My old method for dealing with those business was to buy enough to satisfy the minimum and then return whatever it was I didn’t want. That way, I only spent as much as I’d originally intended, and their stupid policy ended up costing them extra. Yes, I’m that spiteful.
