I have unfortunately fallen behind with my AMEX and had been waiting until the 90 day mark to make payment arrangements. I kept getting emails telling me the last day I had to call them to make arrangements. I called on the last day when I had enough money to take care of things and AMEX said they had already sent my debt off to an agency. Since then, the agency has ran my credit report and is now calling me non stop.
In my conversation, the AMEX agent on the phone acknowledged that I was calling on the last day, but said they had assigned the debt over a week before that.