American Express Ordered to Refund $59.5M for Credit Card Add-Ons

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Are you an American Express cardholder? If so, you may be entitled to a refund.

“American Express has agreed to pay at least $75.7 million to end an investigation into what regulators said was misleading marketing of some discontinued card products,” reports The Associated Press. That amount includes $59.5 million in refunds to more than 335,000 customers and $16.2 million in fines.

Most of the refunds have already been paid, and AmEx has stopped offering the products.

Credit card companies must be ruing the day they began offering credit card add-ons like identity theft protection and payment protection. This is the fourth major settlement reached with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other financial agencies over these kinds of products. We’ve told you about the others here, here and here.

A CFPB press release said, “CFPB examiners discovered that, beginning in 2000 continuing through 2012, three of American Express’s subsidiaries and their vendors and telemarketers engaged in misleading and deceptive tactics to sell some of the company’s credit card add-on products.”

The specific products were Account Protector, Lost Wallet and so-called identity protection products. You can read about the specific allegations here.

Were you among those who received a refund? Share your experience in the comments below or on our Facebook page.

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