American Express... lot of hype, no reward.

American Express Prepaid Cards... DON'T DO IT!!! I don't recall which coupon, freebie-lovin' Momma somethin' page that I took the advice from to get these things, but I would like to apologize if any of you took it from me and got one. They are worthless! It has cost me almost $5 every time I wanted to put money on the stupid thing and IF you want to use your bank acct to do it instead, it takes like a WEEK just to put the funds on there! Additionally, 80% of the time that I tried to use it, they wouldn't take it! Because a lot of merchants can't afford the exorbitant fees that American Express charges just to accept their cards. It's ridiculous!! To add to this frustration, and please understand me here... I have friends from India, had a best friend from there, in fact, but let's face it- there IS a communication barrier there and every time I called them to get my elusive "free $25 gift card" just for getting one of these stupid cards, I had to repeat myself over and over and they STILL didn't understand me half the time and I couldn't understand them half the time so it's just insult to injury here. Bottom line- I'm not going to get even ONE of the $25 gift cards for getting the prepaid cards, much less the "limit of 3" I'd been promised because somewhere, apparently, was the fine, fine (like- nonexistent) print that said you ONLY got that deal if you received an exclusive email from American Express themselves. Huh. Imagine that. After 2 months of dealing with this thing and being told it would be "4-6 weeks" repeatedly, NOW it's that I needed some elusive email. Can't imagine why this was not mentioned- oh, say- like the first TEN times I've called!!
Soooo... moral of the story is... if it sounds too good to be true... ya'. This is my rant and it's over now and I'm truly, truly sorry if any of you have this same experience because of my taking it in good faith from a source that I trusted that this deal was legit. Bogus. Sorry!