I learnt this week that I have “relatives” that I did now that I have. I learnt this from American Express when I called to make an inquiry about the use of my card and needed to verify who I am. I had momentarily forgotten my pin number and was thus asked to name some relatives. That is when I learnt that American Express has the unscrupulous policy of deciding who is or who is not one’s relative based solely upon information they find as a result of a search for one’s public records.
Most surprisingly, what American Express does is simply go primarily by location and last name. And that is woefully irresponsible on the part of American Express. Why? Because many people who are entirely unrelated have the same last name. There are numerous people whose last name is Williams or Cohen or Smith or Cho or Thomas or Davis or Jones or Goldman or Brown. And so on. Yet, these individuals are not related in any way whatsoever. They are not related even though they live in the very same town.
Because the above names mentioned are sufficiently common, that makes it particularly irresponsible and legally problematic that American Express should assume that two people are related merely because they have the same last name and live in the same town. The day after I learnt that there “relatives” of mine in the area, I used one of the available services for searching public records and found out that there are six people with the last name “Thomas” in the Syracuse area. I have never met a single one of them. But American Express has determined that I am related to some of them. It is no more plausible to suppose that two people with the last name “Thomas” are related than it is to suppose that two people with the last name “Cohen” are related or two people with the last name “Cho” are related. So it is even if they belong to the same ethnic group.
Since I am quite scrupulous about how I do things and I am not financially burdened in any way, then it seems very clear to me that if American Express has engaged in such unscrupulous behavior with respect to me, then there is good reason to believe that it has done so with respect to others.
Finally, since public records can be mistaken, it behooves any company to be extremely careful in supposing that two people are related merely on the basis of public records. Every cardholder should be treated with a modicum of decency. American Express blatantly violates that basic precept by the use to which it puts public records with respect to (some of) its cardholders.
I am so very glad that I had momentarily forgotten my pin number. For it was my forgetting that number resulted in the agent to seek verification of my identity naming family members.
© 2011 Laurence Thomas
