I agreed to pay a significant yearly fee for an AmEx card because it is supposed to have good benefits and customer service. My first experience? I call to activate the card and am connected to the worst telemarketer I’ve ever heard, struggling to read her script and sell me lots of crap I don’t want “while waiting for your data to load”.

In the mail with my card is the form I have to mail in to prevent them from sharing my private financial data with “valued partners”. When I try to register on the website I’m greeted with arbitrary restrictions. No “special characters” in my username. My password has to be 8 characters or less. Apparently email addresses can’t contain + in them, but I have to guess at that from the error “you have left the following fields blank or have provided an incorrect format”. After I give them an email address their stupid software will accept I’m told that I have to open “email preferences” to opt-out of the valuable offers they’ll send.

I can’t find the email preferences page ever again. I try hitting the back button to find it but am greeted with errors. The front page is full of offers to up-sell extra services. I finally find the opt-out page, only to be informed it takes them 2-3 weeks to update my preferences.

Stop selling me crap!