American Express: Leaving Home With Someone Else's Credit Card

Dave Farber's Interesting People list has an anonymous story about an American Express screwup. The writer noticed that his or her AmEx card was about to expire and a new one had not been delivered. American Express explained that the card had been sent, but it had been returned for some unknown reason, and promised to overnight the card -- which they did. Unfortunately, in the package American Express also included 34 other ready-to-go American Express cards for other people that had also been returned when sent. Mistakes happen -- and even though that's a pretty big one for a credit card company -- what's worse is how the company responded when told about it. Basically, they didn't respond. They promised to call the person back, but never did and no one seems particularly concerned that 34 American Express cards that don't require authorization were delivered to someone they don't belong to.