# Woman charges $951K on Amex card, sues Amex for letting her charge it **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 27, 2004, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831 "2004-11-27T03:44:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/41 "2004-11-28T01:53:04Z")
**lezlers** , you are my hero. ---
**Author:** ![Metacom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecae2f/32.png) [@Metacom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Metacom)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/42 "2004-11-28T05:23:06Z")
> [@lezlers](#): > > This whole “save the poor widdle college students from themselves!” mentality just pisses me right the hell off. You wanna be an adult? You can start by taking responsibility for your own damn actions. _golf clap_ The responsibility works both ways. I have no problem criticizing people who misuse credit, but I also have no problem criticizing credit card companies that give credit to risky people and then try and strip _my_ rights by clamoring for bankruptcy reform because they made bad decisions about who they gave their money to. You wanna come down on irresponsible college students? Fine. But don’t ignore the fact that the credit card companies know (statistically speaking) _exactly_ what they’re getting into when they lend money to people and they do it anyways, because even with an occaisonal idiot debtor they still make an awful lot of money. To be more blunt: College student with no income digging themselves into a hole by buying shit they don’t need? Stupid. Credit card company giving college student with no source of income a non-trivial credit limit? Stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/43 "2004-11-28T07:03:40Z")
Won’t someone think of the poor _jewish_ Victoria’s Secret Model/ saudi princessess? Thanks for the links, Caver ---
**Author:** ![Abbie\_Carmichael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/49beb7/32.png) [@Abbie\_Carmichael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abbie_Carmichael)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/44 "2004-11-28T07:05:17Z")
> [@Metacom](#): > > _golf clap_ > > The responsibility works both ways. I have no problem criticizing people who misuse credit, but I also have no problem criticizing credit card companies that give credit to risky people and then try and strip _my_ rights by clamoring for bankruptcy reform because they made bad decisions about who they gave their money to. You wanna come down on irresponsible college students? Fine. But don’t ignore the fact that the credit card companies know (statistically speaking) _exactly_ what they’re getting into when they lend money to people and they do it anyways, because even with an occaisonal idiot debtor they still make an awful lot of money. Well said. Of course they make a killing. They know some students will get a relative to pay their bill. Others will somehow manage to pay their debt off another way. Those who default? Oh well, no money lost, because they’re charging all of their cardholders 24 or so percent interest, not to mention those sky high fees if your payment is late just one day. Those interest rates are as high as they are because the company needs to recover what they lose when a customer defaults. Think the company cares when a customer defaults? Hell no. They’re going to get their money anyway, which is why they will give a card to pretty much anyone. Those cardholders who\* are \* responsible are paying their own debts as well as the debts of those who screw up. What? You think that the company is actually out $8,000 or whatnot when Customer A defaults? Customers B-Z will cover that 8k in about 2 months via the other fees they’ll pay for the honor of having their cards. I’d rather see cards be a LOT harder to get and come with a much, much lower interest rate than the current system. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/45 "2004-11-28T08:26:11Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > Furthermore, an 18-year old is plenty old enough to know how credit cards work. No college-age student with a mental capacity greater than that of a door knob could possibly think that a credit card is “free money” or anything that even resembles “free money.” If they spend more than they can afford then it’s their own fault for being irresponsible little shitheads, not the evil, malicious banks “preying” on college campuses. Nobody ever made you sign a credit card contract. So you’re saying that I don’t really have a magic goodies creator? ---
**Author:** ![Largo62](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/45deac/32.png) [@Largo62](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Largo62)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/46 "2004-11-28T09:31:41Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > If you’re too fucking stupid at 18 to get how those things work, it’s a wonder you can manage to function as an adult at all. Too undisciplined I can kind of understand but that’s not Visa’s fault. > Haj Agreed. Maybe the real answer is that at 18 too many people really aren’t adults. Let’s boost the voting age back to 21. Not that it would have helped in the last election. This woman is clearly a con artist. I hope she gets the whole 15 years _and_ has to pay AMEX back. (Personally, I hate AMEX, but in this case they are right.) ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/47 "2004-11-28T09:47:34Z")
> [@Abbie Carmichael](#): > > I’d rather see cards be a LOT harder to get and come with a much, much lower interest rate than the current system. Cards with a lower interest rate are harder to get in the current system. Haj ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Death](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecccb3/32.png) [@Evil\_Death](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Death)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/48 "2004-11-28T10:07:35Z")
> [@Snooooopy](#): > > The principle, actually, is that you’re on the hook for your decisions when you’re 18. Doesn’t say anything about the capacity to make intelligent decisions. AIUI, Bush lost the 18-25 demographic rather handily. Seems like stupidity is something you acquire with age. Meanwhile, back at the topic, that’s why the CC companies aren’t allowed/don’t issue cards to the under-18s - because they aren’t on the hook. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/49 "2004-11-28T10:19:23Z")
> [@Evil Death](#): > > AIUI, Bush lost the 18-25 demographic rather handily. Seems like stupidity is something you acquire with age… Most of the 18-25 demographic were home playing with their X-Boxes instead of voting. Stupidity has no age limit. No doubt those X-Boxes were purchased on credit and with credit card corporations being generally conservative, we have the makings of a great conspiracy theory. Haj ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Death](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecccb3/32.png) [@Evil\_Death](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Death)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/50 "2004-11-28T10:25:53Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > Most of the 18-25 demographic were home playing with their X-Boxes instead of voting. Stupidity has no age limit. No doubt those X-Boxes were purchased on credit and with credit card corporations being generally conservative, we have the makings of a great conspiracy theory. We already have the makings of a great conspiracy theory. You’re just bitter 'cause you got stung. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Aldebaran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Aldebaran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aldebaran)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/51 "2004-11-28T13:12:04Z")
> [@Shirley Ujest](#): > > Won’t someone think of the poor _jewish_ Victoria’s Secret Model/ saudi princessess? Oh God… My aunt escaped again and uses her fake US passports… She sued the Credit Card Company ? Oh God, oh God… She doesn’t remember she owns it. This is Trouble. Won’t anybody think of the children? ---
**Author:** ![Snooooopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Snooooopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snooooopy)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/52 "2004-11-28T20:53:04Z")
> [@Evil Death](#): > > AIUI, Bush lost the 18-25 demographic rather handily. Seems like stupidity is something you acquire with age. That’s a new one on me – “AIUI.” At first I thought it meant “Also, If (yo)U’re Interested,” but then Google helped me learn the real definition. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc348/32.png) [@The\_Flying\_Dutchman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Flying_Dutchman)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/53 "2004-11-28T21:39:56Z")
> [@danceswithcats](#): > > A woman who claimed to be… Why did you have to specify a woman ? How about " A muslim who claimed to be …" ---
**Author:** ![lezlers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@lezlers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lezlers)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/54 "2004-11-28T22:12:55Z")
Please, please _please_ let the above post be a joke… ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/55 "2004-11-28T22:41:04Z")
**AC:** \*Of course they make a killing. They know some students will get a relative to pay their bill. Others will somehow manage to pay their debt off another way. \* Including rolling their credit-card debts into low-interest, deferred-repayment, taxpayer-guaranteed [student loans](http://www.creditcardnation.com/newdream2003.html): > [@](#): > > The unrestrained use of “plastic money” can fundamentally undermine teens’ cognitive ability to understand the relationship between income and standard of living. Poor payment habits can also lead to abysmal personal credit reports with > shocking results for naive twenty-somethings: rejections for apartment rentals, home mortgages, auto loans, car insurance, graduate school loans, professional school admission, and even jobs. […] > > Credit card companies encourage fantasies of easy money because students are so profitable: teens have financial naivete, high material expectations, responsiveness to relatively low-cost marketing campaigns, high potential earnings, and future demand for financial services. Not surprisingly, companies are approving credit lines for students at progressively earlier ages, including high school seniors. […] > > As profits from revolving debt escalated in the late 80s, the institutional pressure to expand credit card portfolios intensified. Banks began strategizing over how to penetrate the desirous but risky college market. Financial institutions learned that excluding parents from the credit approval process was a lucrative policy that increased students’ discretionary purchases, leading to mounting finance charges and fees. By the beginning of the 1989-91 recession, about one-half of college students at four-year institutions had their own credit cards, but few had accumulated over $5,000 in revolving debt. This quickly changed as banks marketed credit cards to juniors and sophomores. By the late 1990s, over 70 percent of college students at four-year institutions had credit cards and banks commonly marketed them to freshmen. […] > > Today, three-fourths of college students have bank-issued credit cards. And, at public institutions, students commonly use their college loans (whose repayment schedule is deferred until after graduation) to pay down their monthly credit card balances — a perverse form of a savings account. This trend is encouraged by the largest credit card issuer and student loan provider, Citibank, which essentially reduces its risk by encouraging students to shift their high interest credit card debt into low-interest, federally guaranteed college loans. This is not something that’s always been going on. When I was a college student in the early '80s, very few of the students I knew had credit cards. This is not a problem that can be solved just by scolding students that they should grow up and manage their money like responsible adults (not that there aren’t a whole lot of adults out there who also run up huge credit card debts, of course). This is a systematic marketing effort by financial institutions to increase profits on lucrative revolving debt by targeting young, inexperienced consumers and **encouraging** them to be financially irresponsible. IMO, putting all the blame on the college students for their foolish financial decisions is a cop-out. Yes, of course everybody ought to manage their money responsibly and not get into debt. But we’re talking here about teenagers who are just getting acquainted with the basics of adult life, from money management to living away from home for the first time, dealing with alcohol, and setting their own schedules. We readily acknowledge that students need a little more help and supervision with most of these aspects of college life than middle-aged independent adults would. Why shouldn’t we admit, as we generally did twenty years ago, that this transitional period also applies to money matters? Anybody who would let the credit sharks have free play in the college swimming pool and then say it’s all the students’ fault if they get bitten is being irresponsibly naive. Moreover, as has been mentioned already, they’re increasing the burden on parents, taxpayers, and other credit clients. ---
**Author:** ![Aldebaran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Aldebaran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aldebaran)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2004, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/56 "2004-11-28T22:52:55Z")
> [@lezlers](#): > > Please, please _please_ let the above post be a joke… Mine was. Yet I’m afraid the one you refer to was not. Somehow the poster has the idea that everything negative that ever happens is the direct fault of Muslims or has Muslims involved. Salaam. A ---
**Author:** ![Moirai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/96bed5/32.png) [@Moirai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moirai)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/57 "2004-11-29T00:41:42Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > \*\* > Including rolling their credit-card debts into low-interest, deferred-repayment, taxpayer-guaranteed student loans. This is a little misleading, as you cannot “roll” existing debt into a student loan. You may, of course, use the money you recieve as a student loan for anything you wish, and this has always been the case. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/58 "2004-11-29T01:04:33Z")
Yer right **EJG** , sorry if I wasn’t clear. ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/59 "2004-11-29T12:44:02Z")
The fact that Amex has to spend a penny defending this bullshit is travesty. They ought to rack up some insane lawyer bill and stick her ass with it. I hope she gets the book thrown at her. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2004, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831/60 "2004-11-29T16:35:12Z")
> [@Larry Mudd](#): > > If there’s anything sexier than a faux Victoria’s Secret model/Princess, it’s a faux Victoria’s Secret model/Princess with a _sword_. > > I want her airbrushed on the side of my van. Maybe she could do some modeling to work off some of that bill. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-charges-951k-on-amex-card-sues-amex-for-letting-her-charge-it/276831.md?page=4)