
First off, I want to mention that I do just about everything possible to remove our household from as many junk mail lists as I can. I’ve paid money to the Direct Marketing Association. I gone online or called probably hundreds of catalogs. I’ve gotten most of those silly credit card offers stopped. Or so I thought.
Last week, we got two mailers announcing some Delta thing and offering us 25,000 bonus miles with a free companion ticket blah blah blah with American Express. When I looked at who they were addressed to, I about fell over. They were addressed to Petey (our cat) and Tasha (our former dog).
I decided to call American Express and find out what’s going on. The first call went something like this…
AE: Blah blah blah, how can I help you today?
Me: I just received two applications for the Delta Sky Miles American Express and I have one question.
AE: Sure, how can I help?
Me: You can help by telling me how one credit card application got sent to our cat and the other got sent to a dog that hasn’t lived with us in about 5 years.
AE: (silence…for a long time)
Me: Uh…hello?
AE: I’m sorry…what did you say?
Me: I would like to know how to get my cat and dog removed from your mailing list since I’m pretty sure neither one of them qualifies for your credit card.
AE: Oh, those people are off until Monday, but I can give you the number.
So…I wait through the weekend and call again.
AE: Blah, blah, blah, how can I help you today?
Me: You can tell me why your company sent credit card applications to my cat and my former dog, who, by the way, is probably dead.
AE: That’s AWESOME! Oh crap…I don’t mean the dead part…
Me: Trust me, I know this sounds crazy, so go ahead and get it out of your system.
AE: (hand over microphone…cracking up - hey you guys, you’re not going to believe this call!)
Me: So…you know, I could fill these out, but the cat honestly doesn’t have any income. He doesn’t have a social security number or a checking account, in fact, he doesn’t really pull his weight around here.
AE: What about the dog? (you can tell he’s smirking)
Me: Likely dead…thought we covered that?
AE: Oh…right…
Me: So…unless you now give cards to companion animals, dead or alive, how can we get them off the mailing list?
AE: Let me transfer you…but here’s the number just in case you get disconnected.
The next person promised to remove my pets from their mailing list but said that it would take 6-10 weeks to take affect. We have no idea how they even got there in the first place.
So…just for fun, I thought I’d send an email to AmEx because really, shouldn’t someone know about this? I got some generic crappy response:
Please accept my sincere apology for the inconvenience and I have forwarded your email to the appropriate managers. Feedbacks from our Cardmembers represent valuable information about recurrent problems and American Express takes such feedbacks very seriously.
I appreciate you taking your valuable time to contact us about this matter.
I’m sure they don’t actually believe that they sent these to a dog and a cat. Or maybe they’ll just miss the $95 annual fee.