23rd
Can this even be legal?
So when I upgraded my American Express to one of those stupid Black Cards I canceled the old card that I had with them. That was in February of 2006.
Fast forward to yesterday. My wife called me and told me that her credit card (which is off of my main account) was declined. So I looked at all of the cards that our off of my account, the business and the personal and all the balances were paid in full…
So I called American Express customer service who confirmed that indeed my accounts were on a credit hold. The reason was that there was an overdue balance for $200 for over 6 months on the canceled credit card. The crazy part is that the card was paid in full when I canceled (you have to do this) and the charges came onto the card AFTER the card was canceled. It seems that it is American Express’ policy to allow for ETERNITY (or until you send them a death certificate) charges on your canceled card as long as the company that is charging them had charged at least once while the card was active. They call this continuation billing.
I was blown away when they told me this. I assumed that a canceled credit card is actually that, cancelled. Further I can not understand with all of the legalities around consumer finance that a company can still allow charges like this that could effect your credit.
I am am not a litigious person at all but I am going to check with a few lawyers about this just to satisfy my own curiosity as I just can not believe that this is legal.