I saw this in action on a smaller scale. In a past job, my wife organized events for a decent sized company. After an event, she'd typically have a $300k+ balance on her corporate Amex. When she went on maternity leave, the person filling in for her job neglected to actually pay the bills, so when she returned there were quite a few emails and voicemails from Amex regarding the over $500k balance.
The messages started as polite and eventually started to get more desperate in tone. At no point were they threatening or adversarial.
I think that this might reflect more on Amex to be honest.
Amex realises that threatening would hurt their business trust more than anything. During the great depression, Amex accepted checks from other banks which were falling and paying through their own wallet as a matter of integrity. Amex has always been built around this idea of trust and prestige.
They make most of money from what I have heard on the transaction fees which are more than others (3% compared to 1%). They might get desperate but I am sure that they are one of the last guys who would wanna threaten you if you are paying some large bills for them (as compared to normal credit card companies which might even hire people to extract your loans in some messy situations)
So perhaps be so rich that the credit card company understands it as well and treats ya differently :-D
Interesting. And hard to square with my perception of banks as completely mercenary and ruthless. I had a decade-long personal boycott (I know, LOL) of Amex after they, because, with otherwise perfect credit, I forgot about a $30 department-store card bill and got a 30-day-late mark on my report, Amex got spooked and abruptly closed both my never-late accounts with them (which were at or close to 0 balances). This was around 2008 though, so perhaps this was a genius algorithm designed to try and detect the very first whiff of consumer defaults, so they assumed that $30 was the first domino to fall of my personal financial ruin that could lead to me charging my accounts to the max and then going bankrupt.
(I eventually admitted to myself that Amex isn't a person and thus not really capable of insulting my honor, but it took a while!)
Most banks are completely mercenary and ruthless unless its in their incentives to other outcomes. Incentives lead to outcomes and mostly AMEX's incentives are in being the most trustworthy because their real targets are mostly billionaires/heavily influential people.
This does feel a bit silly for amex to do from what I've heard. Probably 2008 were a weird time in general where trust in systems itself were mostly eroded, whether of people to banking institutions and also vice versa.
> (I eventually admitted to myself that Amex isn't a person and thus not really capable of insulting my honor, but it took a while!)
I saw this in action on a smaller scale. In a past job, my wife organized events for a decent sized company. After an event, she'd typically have a $300k+ balance on her corporate Amex. When she went on maternity leave, the person filling in for her job neglected to actually pay the bills, so when she returned there were quite a few emails and voicemails from Amex regarding the over $500k balance.
The messages started as polite and eventually started to get more desperate in tone. At no point were they threatening or adversarial.
I think that this might reflect more on Amex to be honest.
Amex realises that threatening would hurt their business trust more than anything. During the great depression, Amex accepted checks from other banks which were falling and paying through their own wallet as a matter of integrity. Amex has always been built around this idea of trust and prestige.
They make most of money from what I have heard on the transaction fees which are more than others (3% compared to 1%). They might get desperate but I am sure that they are one of the last guys who would wanna threaten you if you are paying some large bills for them (as compared to normal credit card companies which might even hire people to extract your loans in some messy situations)
So perhaps be so rich that the credit card company understands it as well and treats ya differently :-D
Interesting. And hard to square with my perception of banks as completely mercenary and ruthless. I had a decade-long personal boycott (I know, LOL) of Amex after they, because, with otherwise perfect credit, I forgot about a $30 department-store card bill and got a 30-day-late mark on my report, Amex got spooked and abruptly closed both my never-late accounts with them (which were at or close to 0 balances). This was around 2008 though, so perhaps this was a genius algorithm designed to try and detect the very first whiff of consumer defaults, so they assumed that $30 was the first domino to fall of my personal financial ruin that could lead to me charging my accounts to the max and then going bankrupt.
(I eventually admitted to myself that Amex isn't a person and thus not really capable of insulting my honor, but it took a while!)
Most banks are completely mercenary and ruthless unless its in their incentives to other outcomes. Incentives lead to outcomes and mostly AMEX's incentives are in being the most trustworthy because their real targets are mostly billionaires/heavily influential people.
This does feel a bit silly for amex to do from what I've heard. Probably 2008 were a weird time in general where trust in systems itself were mostly eroded, whether of people to banking institutions and also vice versa.
> (I eventually admitted to myself that Amex isn't a person and thus not really capable of insulting my honor, but it took a while!)
haha :-)
This joke only works if you actually impose a cost on AWS of 1.7 billion. If they just serve you a bill for no reason, it's still your problem.
Next question we'll find out is what if you owe the bank $1.7 trillion?
That's the government's problem
Not if you’re Elon Musk
Elon Musk is everyone's problem
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