Some American Express Co. salespeople strong-armed business owners to increase card sign-ups, according to more than a dozen current and former AmEx sales, customer-service and compliance employees, the Wall Street Journal reported. The salespeople have misrepresented card rewards and fees, checked credit reports without consent and, in some cases, issued cards that weren’t sought, the current and former employees said. An AmEx spokesman said the company found a very small number of cases “inconsistent with our sales policies.” “All of those instances were promptly and appropriately addressed with our customers, as necessary, and with our employees, including through disciplinary action,” he said. Current and former employees said that the dodgy sales tactics date to at least 2015, when AmEx was scrambling to retain Costco Wholesale Corp. small-business customers after the warehouse club ended their long-running partnership. The deal’s demise was a huge blow to AmEx. For 16 years, the warehouse club didn’t accept credit cards in its stores from any company but AmEx. AmEx also issued credit cards branded with the Costco logo that offered special perks. Small businesses were a particularly valuable slice of the Costco cohort. The warehouse club sells a lot of things they need—two-liter jugs of olive oil, bulk cleaning supplies, big-screen TVs, tires for their delivery vans. AmEx was about to lose the stream of fees on all of those card purchases.
