For the past month, I've been getting phone messages from American Express. They're recordings saying that they're calling about important business and I must call back immediately.

I haven't used my Amex card in over 3 years and I have a zero balance. But I call them back anyway to make sure there is nothing wrong with my account, and to try to convince them that they should stop calling me. Everyone I speak to there agrees that there is nothing wrong with my account and they are really trying to reach someone else who used to have my phone number.

But the calls keep coming and now they're calling twice a day. Today I was actually home when they called and I spoke to someone who told me the name of the person they want to reach. I told him I am not that person and they will never reach that person at the phone number they are calling. I don't know him and since I've had this phone number for about 8 years now, there is no way they'll ever reach him if they keep calling my number.

Then I went out for a few hours and when I got home, there was another message from them on my machine.

So here's the kicker - when I call them back to tell them they are wasting their money with all these phone calls and they are not reaching the person they want to reach, they are phenomenally rude to me. Twice they've hung up on me -- not accidental disconnects, but actually intentionally hanging up on me. They're treating me like I'm the villain. Yeah, I'm frustrated and it's coming through in my voice when I try to explain this long story to them. But it's hard to remain friendly when their answer is that I just have to live with it because they are either incapable of solving this or they just can't be bothered to try. And it blows my mind that they apparently are trained to deal with upset customers by being rude to the customer and then hanging up on them. And nowhere in this whole mess has it occurred to any of them that I was a good customer for years and they might want to actually solve this problem because it might get me to be their customer again so they could make some money off me. They are completely content to spend money calling me, and spend more money on my calls to their 800 number, and all the while never actually getting the money that this other guy owes them.

Yesterday I managed to find one person there who was actually nice, and she spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to make the phone calls stop. Until finally she confessed that she was starting to get upset and frustrated because the people she was talking to, her own co-workers, were being totally unhelpful to her.

I used to think American Express was a well-run company that put an emphasis on good customer service. This is clearly no longer the case. They are now the most rude, unhelpful and downright abusive company I've ever dealt with.

And I fully expect at least two more messages from them tomorrow, and more the next day, and more the day after that. It's never going to stop. They call in the morning and wake me up and they interrupt my meals. And they just don't care.

Membership has its privileges. Yeah right. Privileges like being harrassed and insulted.

Thank you for letting me vent.