AmEx's False Advertising

I was just watching the cute American Express ad with Tina Fey - MILF!!! - touting their suspicious charge protection service. They call her up about 14,000 racket balls and take the charge off. I've had calls from Visa when I bought something really pricey from eBay, but in my experience AmEx was far less on their game.

It started when I went to Costco to get gas and had my card rejected. Huh? Another AmEx card worked fine, so I gassed up and went home to call them. The CSR said that there was a suspected fraud hold on it and that they'd take it off. Flash-forward a week and once again the card is being declined. It took two calls to India and a total trashing of my schedule to get it sorted out. No explanation as to why what I was told the prior week was inoperable. The security guy was pretty ill-tempered, too.

Jump ahead a month and I happened to look at my balance statement e-mail and say I owed over $4000! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!? I gave them a call after checking my online statement and asked them how they didn't notice what appeared to be me on a tear of $400+ charges at what appeared to be Italian restaurants while ducking back home to get a tank of gas at Costco in the middle of this trip?

They didn't have an answer for that, but removed the charges and killed the card, issuing a new one. Extra problem was that all the stuff I had automatically billed to that card suddenly wasn't getting paid, pissing off those businesses. My financial tracking program is jacked up, too. Thanks, AmEx!!

Bottom line: Cute ad. Cute Tina Fey. Total bullsh*t in reality. (The ads, not Tina.)