I don’t know how they can try to act like the superior sophisticated card when nobody takes them….all other cards have more value because they’re accepted.

We have been doing business with Amex for 5 years now and they always take 3 days. In our type of business that is a rope around our neck since our ticket items are over 1000 dollars.

Although I do agree that there are more clients making bigger purchases with Amex than Visa.

I called our Merchant support who went on to tell us that it was canceled but she was not at liberty to tell me why and that it’s in their contact that they can do so.

I later find out that it’s because we had a customer chargeback an $800 order where we had proof of address matching, delivery and even a signature from the customer because it was sent insured. Still American Express refused to reverse the call and we threatened to get our lawyer involved.

Now even if it’s acceptable to cancel a merchants account is it right to do so without warning and have us find out a week and a half later. We are trying to make a living and this is what they go and do to us. To top it off our lawyer is outraged because we have all the proof needed to show that the sale was a valid sale and they were scamming American Express yet they choose to still support the customer.

This is not over by any means but I am not sure we would ever use American Express again. Thats the way they treat their merchants????????

This is the year 2008, We are in the electronic age, Holding checks / credit card payments is a thing of the past. As of today my company will no longer accept American Express.

For example: If we had $1,000 of credit card transactions on a given day we would three separate deposits over the following days one for Visa/MC and then two, later deposits for Amex and Discover. This makes it much more difficult for us to reconcile our receipts… all because of the occasional non Visa/MC user.

We’ve seriously considered banning Amex and Discover.

So at the retail level for gas stations, it doesn’t matter if you pay with one or the other. The franchisee still gets their money and it’s tagged as ‘credit cards’ not with one card name or the other.

For individual stores, that’s a whole other business I guess. The main thing as I learned while doing some biz dev for my parents, is to shop around the credit card processing company. The fee schedule is radically different from firm to firm. You have to know your credit card usage volume by card and price bids accordingly.

And if you want no questions about money and fees, buy an ATM for $5-7K, put in a wireline and clearinghouse, and take cash only. There’s a restaurant chain in the area that does this. It drives me bonkers, but I try to plan ahead or just borrow cash from my friends when we go there. As much as it bugs me, it’s smart on their part! It’s a pure cash business!

Again, Amex pays out in 1 to 3 days.

Secondly, due to a federal lawsuit brought by the government against VISA/MC for pretending to operate as separate companies yet working together to prevent Banks from issuing Amex to their customers, merchants now have distinctly separate merchant accounts for VISA vs MC.