Amex Paying Customers $300 To Cancel

As you can see the attached image there was a report from CNNmoney.com, published on February 23, 2009 that Amex is paying customers $300 to cancel. However, we could not find any reference in CNN about this publication. When you click on that link it leads to a page that has a 404 message.

However, MSNBC has a report aboud American Express credit cards that, while covering a related topic, has a mention that in February Amex had offered to pay customers $300 dollars to cancer their credit cars.

In the follow story MSNBC writes "So why is a major credit card company doing these financial investigations into customers who are apparently in good standing? Is it another sign of the times that credit lenders are running scared? Remember, American Express recently offered certain customers $300 to give up their cards."

I saw a link in Twitter apparently showing a video footage where CNN had covered the Amex paying customers $300 dollars, but strangely that links only shows a black screen from CNN and the news footage is not showing. The person who Twitted that link questions is too by writing "Amex paying $300 to customers to cancel their cards????"

Apparently the news is still developing. I just saw the Promo Magazine reacting to this by writing that this is a “small pilot program,” an undisclosed number of American Express cardholders have received mail offers that would reward them with a $300 prepaid American Express gift card for paying down their credit balances and closing their accounts."

However, according to the above record "Only when the accounts are fully paid down will the former cardholders receive their $300 payments."

It seems that Amex is trying to strengthen its bottom line by eliminating risky borrowers. Promo goes on writing that "The company gave no information about the total balances of the customers who were being asked to close out their accounts." We could not find any indication of this pilot program in the American Express's website.