Dear Amex:
A letter I sent two years ago to American express...with no response from them so far..i think they are waiting until my lawyers are involeded (2.25 years later)...watch out for the lawsuit (it will be better than daytime television...haven't had time...still in africa...AMEX will be paying for my retirment when i do sue...seriously...I used to be a financial planner...the worst thing you could get is AMEX in any form)....read on:

>I am a long-term traveller in Africa. I started this trip intending
>to work my way around the world somehow. I am still in Africa after
>14 months.
>
>Prior to my departure, I conducted plenty of research on the how¹s
>and who¹s of my intended travel plans. At this time, I learned of
>the many benefits for travellers that Amex cardholder and travellers
>cheque holders would have. As a former financial planner, I believe
>that it is important to be well informed about finances and ways of
>accessing funds while on the road. I got your credit card to use for
>emergencies as well as using it to have mail delivered to Amex
>offices for me. I could retrieve it when I arrived in a certain town
>(a service I have yet to use) a few days later. I also was planning
>to use my AMEX card when I needed to draw money from my chequing
>accounts (to use the credit card as security by writing cheques from
>my bank account) to purchase more travellers cheques. I wasn¹t
>actually planning on using the card frequently because I couldn¹t
>check my balances on line (or just didn¹t have enough time to set
>this up before I leftŠ from earlier experience, setting up AMEX
>account info doesn¹t work as smoothly as is indicated in the
>supplied glossary. It is very time consuming). In addition to this,
>your advertisements all emphasised how little hassle the cheques
>were to be replaced if they were lost or stolen. They touted them as
>fast, easy and convenient to use, replace, and generally deal with
>for travellers. I was sold on the idea and immediately applied for
>the credit card and started to enquire about the travellers cheques.
>
>My trip has cost me in the neighbourhood of 20,000 dollars. My
>original intention was to use travellers cheques for a large part of
>those funds, but once I experienced how they worked (or to the
>contrary didn¹t work) I regretted my decision, thankfully I hadn¹t
>bought them all at the same time. I really would have been in a
>pickle then.
>
>My experiences with your organization have been anything but fast or
>convenient. In fact, they have been the exact opposite to what your
>organization proclaims. The only thing that has been consistent
>about your services for me, is how inconvenient, disorganised and
>slow they have been. I have never had such consistently negative
>experiences with any financial institution before. Every single
>interaction with AE has been a struggle and far more work on my part
>than it should have been. It has been the single problem that has
>haunted me in every country I have travelled. When people ask me
>what is the worst thing that has happened to me in my travels, they
>expect me to say I got robbed or attacked or something. After all
>you would expect I would have lots of trouble hitch hiking, as a
>women on my own across Africa. Imagine their surprise when I say
>American Express services have been the worst experience in my 14
>months on the road.
>
>It stared with my application for a credit card and it should have
>ended there. Let me explain: I laughed when my initial application
>for your credit card was turned down. For years every bank I¹ve
>walked into has tried to give me credit in every form possible,
>mortgages, lines of credit, credit cards, business loans. This is
>what financial institutions do when you have a perfect credit
>rating, they all want you as their client, because you¹re a low
>risk.
>
>At this point, I thought there must be something wrong at American
>Express, but they passed the buck (so to speak) and blamed my bank
>for the error. So I offered to call my bank and straighten the
>problem out. I asked them to send the proper information to AE,
>which I believe they did. The next day I called AE,who maintained
>they didn¹t have the information and asked me to phone my bank
>again. This lead to a cat and mouse game of me having to spend
>approximately 30 minutes per day on the phone over 2 months trying
>to straighten up this situation, hardly convenient for a wanted
>customer. I really don¹t understand what the difficulty was and why
>your employees could not deal with my bank on their own, with my
>approval to do so. At some points I was spending so much time
>calling and checking up on your employees (to ensure that they were
>rushing to meet my departure deadlines and deliver my card on time)
>that I should have been billing AE for MY time. Not only was it
>taking time away from my own business, but it was also causing me a
>great deal of stress babysitting your employees. I already had
>enough on my plate in planning over a year away from home. I
>estimate that the telephone calls I made daily over the 2 month
>period between when I applied and finally got the card delivered by
>rush courier, cost me 20 hour of my time (which is billable at an
>average 50 dollar an hour or a 1000 dollars that I lost applying for
>your card).
>
>My problems were only just beginning. Your services in Madagascar
>were despicable (this is being kind). I had misplaced some
>travellers cheques and needed to replace them. I also wanted to
>purchase some new travellers cheques to see how the emergency cheque
>cashing option worked with my credit card (the main reason I got
>it). I flew to Tana (or Antananarivo) rather than another
>destination because that¹s where your only office was to sort out
>these problems. I had already spent time in Antananarivo and seen
>everything I wanted to see there, but had to go back to sort out the
>AE problems. I was quite disappointed to learn that to purchase
>travellers cheques I had to convert my Canadian funds to local
>currency (Malagasy) and then convert them to U.S. to buy the
>travellers cheques. I wondered how much money I would lose in the
>process and in commissions (on top of already paying fees to get the
>travellers cheques and fees to cash them). No one (in any of your
>offices) could provide an answer to this.
>
>There was one office in Antananarivo (at Madagascar Air Tours Jan
>23 01/01) for all the paper work and (unknown to me) a second office
>in a bank that handed out the cheques themselves. The woman in the
>Madagascar Air Tours office did everything possible to make
>replacing my lost cheques a hassle from firstly accusing me of not
>being honest about their whereabouts (because I didn¹t report them
>to the police???). I thought this was ridiculous and when I spoke to
>your reps on the telephone in front of her, I explained to them that
>they were misplaced and not stolen. Your reps told me I didn¹t need
>to contact the police about this.
>
>The value of expenses in Madagascar was quite cheap so a 150 U.S.
>dollars would last you about a week or so. The most I would cash in
>travellers cheques was 200 dollars at once. When I finally did get
>the go ahead to have my cheques replaced and get new ones to the
>tune of 1000 U.S. I had to go to the "other" office to pick up my
>new travellers cheques. I now knew that 100.00 & 50.00 denominations
>would be good for the remainder of my travels in Madagascar and most
>places in Africa. It was cheap to travel here and I didn¹t know how
>long I would be in many of the countries I was visiting. Larger
>denominations were useless as in some countries in Africa you cannot
>leave with the countries currency or if you do, no one will change
>money with you. Upon my arrival at the office in charge of the
>cheques, I couldn¹t get any cheques except the 20 or 500 U.S.
>denominations. The 500¹s were useless (really defeating the purpose
>of even carrying travellers chequesŠI may as well just taken the
>risk and carried the cash on meŠI would never carry 500 U.S cash as
>a traveller, so it didn¹t make sense to buy such a large
>denomination travellers cheque in such a poor country). The 20
>dollar denominations were equally ridiculous. I would have had to
>buy and carry 50 of them. Cashing 5 or 10 20¹s would have taken at
>least an hour in most banksŠhow convenient for your customers. I had
>to return to the original office to complain.
>
>I basically spent the next week or so being sent to run back and
>forth between the two offices to try and find an alternative
>solution to my problems. In my opinion, the representative in the
>Airtours office did everything in her power to make this difficult
>for me. She made me cross town several times between the two offices
>to try to gather information rather than calling the office for me
>or trying to sort it out herself. They had ridiculous working hours
>and were closed half the time that I approached the offices. I
>thought it would be possible to find out when a new batch of cheques
>was being delivered. I would be back in 1.5 months and thought I
>could pick up the cheques then, but this information was not
>forthcoming. This information (and why no one would help me get it)
>was a complete mystery to me. When I returned to Tanna 1.5 months
>later and went to both offices yet again (the attendant still hadn¹t
>learned to use her phone) and consequently there were still no
>cheques available for me.
>In the end, I had to cancel this whole transaction of trying to pick
>up some cheques. The lazy woman who worked at the airtours office
>was also incompetent. She told me I could pick up the cheques
>anywhere with a form she gave me. I left letting her know that I
>would pick them up in South Africa.
>
>When I arrived in your offices, a few days later in the Sandton Sun
>(Johannesburg) centre to claim my cheques, I was told that I had
>already picked them up. Apparently the incompetent in the Madagascar
>office had failed to update my file to read that I hadn¹t picked the
>cheques up in Madagascar (I suppose she still hadn¹t learnt how to
>use the phone). I then had to spend two more days in your offices in
>Johannesburg trying to sort this problem out rather than travelling
>yet again!
>
>Prior to leaving home and since I was travelling around the world, I
>had requested a booklet listing the American express offices around
>the world so I could use the services in the different countries I
>was in. Apparently, this didn¹t exist in Canada, or so I was told. I
>was told the information was on your web page and instructed to
>download it from there. When I got to your web page, it was set up
>in a way that would have taken me a full 40 hour week to download
>this information, really convenient AMEX!!! What an incredible waste
>of your customers time!!! Especially when the same thing was quite
>easily available in your New York offices. All I had to do was ask.
>Why the difference?
>
>Furthermore, your booklet is completely out of date and has not
>revised the request of closing offices. When I arrived at a former
>AE representative office in Mbabane, Swaziland, (that was completely
>out of my way mind you!!), listed in your booklet as open, to my
>extreme disappointment it wasn¹t. I learned that this particular
>office has been sending AE letters for 10 years telling them that
>they no longer are operating or representing AE and that AE hadn¹t
>updated this listing in that time. The booklet itself says it¹s
>"accurate as of December 1999," obviously, this is NOT the case. So
>I stood there swearing in several languages at AE yet again. It has
>actually taken me a year to write this complaint because I have been
>too angry and stressed out to write a letter with a minimum of swear
>words and still get my feelings for your inadequate services,
>accurately across. I will submit that my experiences with AE have
>been exceptionally bad.
>
>Many of the places I¹ve been to in Africa don¹t even cash travellers
>cheques and if they do they charge a 15 dollar U.S. fee to cash any
>American express cheque. Everywhere (or at least every bank can
>offer you a cash advance) takes the major credit cards. Even a 20
>dollar AE cheque costs you 15 dollars to cash, so your lucky clients
>only get 5 dollars after cashing a 20 dollar cheque. This happened
>in Vilanculos, Mozambique. Of course this made me realize that
>getting a cash advance from one of my many credit cards was much
>more convenient, at least twice as fast, and far less expensive than
>the fees for purchasing American Express cheques. The converting of
>my Canadian funds to local currency, then to American and cashing
>them was costing me a fortune. This is when I decided to cancel my
>cheques and have my money refunded. Little did I know how much
>hassle this would be, how much stress it would cause and that it
>would take several months to do it. All I wanted was my money back,
>a simple enough request or so I thought.
>
>The straw that broke my back with AE was when I was finally tried to
>cancel my travels cheques. The first suggestion your employee gave
>me was to have the cash delivered in local funds in Mozambique (a
>currency which no one will trade with) for the full amount of my
>refund. I could have lived comfortably on this in Mozambique for
>about a year. How convenient! This would have been completely
>useless as I am travelling around Africa, not around Mozambique as I
>had told him (the AE rep.). It is very frustrating to not have been
>able to arrange for a refund in any decent (or widely acceptable)
>currency while travelling, although I bought the cheques in U.S.
>funds. Here I am in Africa battling AE to give me MY money in a
>widely acceptable currency-I thought this would be a simple request
>to carry out. AE does it all the time, I thought. I had little idea
>that I would be trapped in this catch 22 situations. At one point I
>was told that the only way for me to get a refund in American funds
>was to buy more travellers cheques after cancelling them (a
>ridiculous suggestion because they have been far more hassle then
>they are worth). Not only did this suggestion add insult to injury
>it did nothing to solve my problems.
>
>The next best option was to have the funds wired to my account. I
>was told not to worry that the money would be deposited in my
>account within five working days. I left my power of attorney,
>Natasha Stor, in charge and notified AE that she would deal with
>receiving the funds in case of any problems or delays. By this
>point, I was expecting problems and delays with receiving the funds.
>Apparently the customer service rep went ahead and sent some other
>cheques to Natasha¹s old address without instruction from her as to
>whether it would be a viable solution to the problem, causing yet
>more delays as she had moved. I have now been travelling around for
>the last three months, short on money in my bank account because of
>AE and panicking about my credit cards being paid on time because of
>my automatic debit set up. I hope this situation has not affected my
>perfect credit rating, as I have been unable to check my accounts
>while on the road. All this thanks again to American Express.
>
>Every interaction I have had in an AE office or on the telephone to
>try to sort out these problems has been at least an hour of my time
>and your employees timeŠand usually it¹s been a waste of both of our
>times because we are unable to deliver my funds to me, in a useable
>currency. It¹s not just that, almost every person I¹ve spoken to
>about this problem in Africa has had trouble with AE. Many of the
>people I¹ve spoken to in tourism (the industry I am currently
>working in) do not accept AE because they have not paid bills on
>time. I am now starting to write for travel journals and as a former
>financial planner am often asked what the best way to deal with
>money on a long term trip is. I certainly have a lot of experience
>in how not to deal with money on the road thanks to AE; I haven¹t
>been very specific about my experiences as yet. My profession is in
>Advertising and P.R. I am fully aware of how important it is to give
>good reliable customer service. As a former financial planner I
>understand that it is vitally important to have your clients trust
>that your services deliver what they promise (it is their money
>after all!)ŠIt is a matter of building confidence just to gain your
>clients. That is why you advertise, but if you can¹t live up to your
>claims, you will lose customers quickly. I am sure you are fully
>aware of how quickly (and how far a bad service story travels) and
>how much damage it does. I have my own consulting business and I try
>to do everything in my power to make my customers happy. My story
>unfortunately is endlessly fraught with trouble and it is a sad one
>for AE.
>What evidence do I have to back up my claims? Since I had cancelled
>my travellers cheques and had had enough of the travellers cheques
>run around I didn¹t keep any receipts for cashing them. What use
>would they be to me? I thought and I really didn¹t need the extra
>weight on my baggage. I have a few claim numbers so you can look up
>my files, they are as follows: 013528237, then there are some other
>numbers listed here 12 73 57 16 00 file 012 0103 263 B428 B428 for
>the problems in Madagascar. I dealt with Jerry one of your team
>leaders in Utah. Since my problem with AE has been international I
>am Ccing this letter to the following offices or people in hopes of
>getting some answers to the problems I have had, Angelina Mcguire,
>Louise Duncan in Brighton and your executive offices in Utah. The
>only documents I have to substantiate my claims are some of my
>purchase receipts, because there are places where institutions will
>not cash travellers cheques without them. I can send them on to you
>when you sort out who will be dealing with my claim. I bought my
>travellers cheques in Canada, the U.S. and South Africa. All of my
>information in regards to the Credit card problems was occurred in
>Oct. & Nov. 2000, in Canada. I am not even sure whom to write to
>about these problems. If you know could you please inform me or
>please pass this letter on to the appropriate parties?
>The most reliable way to contact me is through my email address as
>follows: lakeview_design@hotmail.com or if I am in South Africa
>(where I should be for the next few months) my cell +27 (0)
>82-254-3077.
>What I want to know at this point is how American Express plans to
>compensate me for stress, loss of vacation time and loss of work
>time. I would also like to have all of the service charges and
>commissions I¹ve paid, when I bought the cheques and cashed them,
>refunded (some may have already been refunded, I can¹t be sure due
>to lack of information).
>I think it¹s only fair that I be paid the interest I would have made
>had I left the funds in my investment account (they would have been
>far more accessible this way too). I have also spent a mint on
>Internet charges in Africa trying to sort this problem out with my
>power of attorney and bank. I would therefore like to be reimbursed
>for this. Over the past 14 months my loss of vacation time has
>amounted to 3 weeks and this includes counting paying for
>accommodation, hours on the phone, flights to where your
>representatives were situated to replace lost cheques (which didn¹t
>get replaced), food etc. .,in cities I don¹t want to be in. The only
>reason I was there is because that is where the American Express
>office is so I need to be there to try my hardest to get my funds. I
>would much rather have spent my time seeing sights in other places,
>rather than sitting with a representative of AE arguing over how
>they are to return MY money to me, or telling me that I should be
>thrilled that they are actually replacing lost cheques while they
>are accusing me of not being honest with them about the cheques
>whereabouts. I would also like to remind you at this point that I
>lost 20 hours for (or a 1000 dollars that I lost) consulting time
>while applying for your card.
>In fact I would rather be robbed of my money then go through this
>hassle with AE again. At least a robbery would be over quickly and
>it wouldn¹t haunt me for 14 months in every country I¹ve been to.
>The most cash I carry at once is $200.00, much more worthwhile
>having that stolen, than having thousands of dollars of my own money
>unavailable to me because of AE. The hassle of my time wasted,
>paying for flights and accommodation to where I didn¹t want to be
>etc that I listed previously far exceeds $200. What I have
>experienced with AE in Africa and at home have been the exact
>antithesis of service. It is a sad story for a company that prides
>itself on it¹s ability to give good customer service and peace of
>mind in strange places around the world, where you need peace of
>mind, not the hassles I have had. I hope that we can come to an
>agreeable solution to the problems I have faced and I look forward
>to your correspondence by email.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>
>
>
>Daniela Stor

I' trying hard to be sympathetic. You have obviously had some dreadful experiences with Amex and this has no doubt contributed to the rather fraught feel of your note. I'm disinclined to use Amex anyway and your experiences haven't changed my mind - but I can't help feeling that you could have avoided some of these problems with a little advance planning.

I have travelled in Asia, Africa and Central America recently. My preferred method of financing myself whilst abroad (outside Europe) is by credit card - but I check I advance about how easy this is.

In Central America recently we worked out that we would have 8 consecutive days away from ATMs, so we carried enough cash. I'm planning two trips to Africa, visiting 4 countries, so I've looked in suitable guide books, e.g. Rough Guide, Lonely Planet etc. to discover how useful Mastercard will be. In the section on Travellers Cheques in at least one guide, there is a specific reference to the possibility of high transaction charges. This is basic research which should be carried out by anyone travelling extensively outside of 'the west'. I would have checked anyway, if I was planning to use Travellers Cheques, because I am aware of at least one European country that charges, or at least used to charge, a rather high flat rate for changing them.

I hope you get this sorted out soon and that your money problems get resolved, but I can't help thinking that for a "former financial planner" your financial planning for your holiday was a little weak.