Amex customer service has gone downhill, I’m closing my account

I had my Amex card for 3-4 years, in the past 2 years or so, I noticed they almost entirely replaced customer service with offshore, outsourced people who had bad communication.

Simple questions take a lot of back and forth, and I feel like I have to squeeze information out of them, instead of them proactively trying to help me.

For reference, I think Amazon is the gold standard in customer service.

I paid for this year already, but I’m closing my account after that. Not worth $350 in annual fees.

Case in point, my autopay didn’t go through, I spent an hour on the phone trying to cancel the autopay and manually paid partially ($4k) instead. The agent said not to worry, the autopay ($8k) will not be processed anymore.

Today I saw $12k was taken from my bank.

I chatted with them, the result is I have to monitor when the money posts and chat with them again to return the $8k to my bank.

This is fine but not ideal, but it took 45-50 minutes to get this information using their online chat.

I wish I could attach screenshots of the conversation. But this subreddit doesn’t allow that, I think.

Huge waste of time, I had to repeat myself over and over again, squeezing information out of them. I felt like ChatGPT understand me better.

Edit: I’m getting downvoted for stating I’ve had mostly good service from Amazon and mostly negative and time wasting service from Amex. I’m even getting downvoted for saying how much a Gold card costs. Did I piss off the Amex fan boys or something? Lmao. Getting downvoted for factual information and my real experiences with these 2 companies is crazy work