American Express

Well, my experience goes back over 3 years. I paid them in full. And all I will say (other than what I've already posted here) is don't fall for their Optima Card ploy.

I'm in the process right now. I've got about $11K and a bit. I'm at about 100 days, and it's been turned over to a CA. However, they only turned over what I'm past due on, whic is somewhere in the neighborhood of about $800. I thought this was truly bizarre. Why not turn over the entire amount? Why only the late payments?
I'm essentially ignoring the CA and continuing to deal only with Amex itself.

Amex only sent my past-due amount to collections as well. I remember the collector being a complete jerk; I was past-due like $250, I had just paid them $100 the day before and he was demanding the rest and telling me I should go get a second job. I started having fun with him, told him "Oh I'm sure you pay all your bills, why don't you practice what you preach." He got pissed and he told me to hang up the phone. I told him "I'm not going to hang up, you hang up." And we seriously went on for about five minutes saying "No, you hang up" to each other. He finally hung up on me.

Anyway I strayed.... I think it has to do with when/how they declare a "default." If they haven't declared you to be in default, then technically they can't tell you to pay the amounts that aren't due yet. It seems Amex doesn't have an in-house collection dept, and so as soon as your account goes past-due, they send your past-due balance out to third-party collection agencies.

i settled both of my amex cards at 30% after it went to collections agency, NCO. Amex sent it to collections quickly (around 60 and 90 days past due) but I don't believe the debt was sold to them and they were collecting on Amex's behalf. That was at the end of October. It was at the last day of the month and they settled it within the first month that they had it..something about having to show results to Amex or else, the account would go to another CA. At first, they offered a high % but ended up settling at 30% with lump sum. However, it seems like others are having a more difficult time with settling with Amex so possibly it depends on which CA it goes to, as well as possibly several other factors...

I've read on others' posts that Amex doesn't change the owed amount to $0 dollars after settlement on your credit report, it will just show the original owed amount. That held true for one of my cards but not the other. I'm planning to see how I can dispute that b/c it really isn't consistent since on one card says bad debt with $0 balance and the other says settlement with the original owed amount of 11K still on it. Confusing!

Good luck with your Amex settlements!

Yes it would appear that the odds at a reasonable settlement depend on who the account is sent to. Our's went to Zwicker, so far they've made no reasonable offers and have flat out lied on multiple occassions. First they claimed they'd filed suit back in early December, claimed they were going to garnish etc but that a payment would stop everything. An easy check of the actual court it would go to showed nothing. They always call with a blocked ID, but whatever, we answer all our calls anyway. A few days ago they called and demanded the entire balance. They also started bringing up that we had the money to settle an account and they claimed it was for 10,000, we politely informed them it was for 2k and some change and that there was no way we could borrow or get a loan for 10k+ for the balance. While in the past there'd be no issue with securing a loan, as we paid down out debt to lower our credit to debt ratio, they responded by chopping the credit lines which only served to max out the credit to debt ratio....As an example, back in Jan-Feb, one of my Chase cards had a balance of 14k with a line of 22K, I sent them a payment for 10K, to drop my balance down to 4K...Keep in Mind I'd never been late in the 12+ year history with any of my accounts. They responded by chopping my credit line down to 4,600....and in short order, most of the creditors did the same...Now that my business has tricked to a stand still, just try getting a loan with a credit to debt ratio of 100%...

My 180+ day account has now been moved from United Recovery Servicies to James A. West law firm. What does this mean? They said American Express still owns and they are servicing.

Should I validate?

and as I've stated in other threads, I settled with NCO/Amex for 35% after 75 days late and only a week with NCO. Guess I was lucky, but my CR looks like crap so it's an easy sell. Good Luck

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I sent James A. West debt validation letter in Feb 2010 and they received it 2/12/2010. Now, 6 days latter I get a call from NCO Financial saying they are servcing debt. Is that common with American Express?

Thanks

I don't know about that. But I can tell you that NCO is very settlement friendly at around 35%.