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Important Article Update – We have received several calls from people trying to resolve their issue with an “American Express Collection Transaction”. The following post is simply meant to explain what the line item on your statement is; we are in no way related to American Express. If you call us, we can’t help you.
Do Not Call Us! Call your bank,
or American Express Merchant Services
1-866-871-8567 M – F: 9.00 am – 7.30 pm ET.
Here’s one for the bookkeepers; discovered a charge on the bank statement for $4.95. The transaction ID stated American Express Collection and my business name, so it seemed legitimate, but it had never happened before.
The only transactions I’ve seen before in relation to my merchant account was from Authorize.net and Pipeline Data Processing. I tried searching on “American Express Collection” in case it was a known fraud, but the results were vague at best.
So I called my bank to make certain this wasn’t some sort of phishing fraud on my business account. My bank quickly verified the transaction and gave me the Amex number to call.
When I called Amex, I was able to verify that the transaction was legitimate. It turns out that the fee was for hard copies of my monthly transactions. When the account was initially setup, I went with online reports, but since I hadn’t logged in to it in more than 13 months the system defaulted to paper reports – leading to a $4.95 processing fee from Amex.
Meanwhile I was completely unaware of this as Pipeline sends monthly reports and I’d moved the office a couple of times since initially setting up the merchant account. It turns out that when you Update your Merchant account information, they don’t update Amex with the new address and my mail was being delivered to an old address.
And now for the moral of this story is – If you see a transaction for $4.95 from American Express Collection on your bank statement give Amex a call and either switch to online reporting or you can ask them to turn it off entirely.
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