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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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Previous: Not: Apple iPod shuffle page | Main | Next: (Fun) Custom error messages
January 22, 2005 11:07 AM
Broken: Amex online access
In this post, Matt Haughey reports:
A standard green Amex card only keeps 6 months of archived purchase data online. My bank lets me go back as long as I've had an account (two years). I called amex and there was nothing they could do, though they offered to bump me up to a blue business card that apparently offers all your archived purchases online.I still believe this is totally broken for the standard card, especially considering I switched to an online only option so that I didn't have to keep track of bills and statements, assuming they would do that for me.
Seriously... how much incremental cost would there be for Amex to hold a few more months of data?
Hmm, you want at least two years, which somehow translates to "a few more months". Since when is 18 equal to "a few". Then multiply 18 months by ... say ... 50 million Cardmembers (more or less), each having ... say ... 40 transactions per month (more or less).
Yeah, it's not much data to store, after all.
I would just list to state, that your information is probably a text file...so thefore not a whole lot of space is required for you...maybe 10kb..so you can fit, what 102 guys in a meg(1024kb) and around 102,000 in one gig...so thefore your 50 million customers could easily fit on a 500 gig hard drive...and from a multimillion dollar company, a couple hundred bucks isnt much to ask
_@_v - that depends on how cheap your bank/financial insitution is when it comes to updating technology...
_@_v - peeking over the counter at my local branch i noticed their computer is still using those bigass 8.25" floppy drives from back in the day...
_@_v - that depends on how cheap your bank/financial insitution is when it comes to updating technology...
_@_v - peeking over the counter at my local branch i noticed their computer is still using those bigass 8.25" floppy drives from back in the day...
Hard drive space for your PC is cheap. Storage space for enterprise level capability is not. When you've got a huge customer base going after statement information, it's no longer just a cheap hard drive on sale from Best Buy that does the trick. You're looking at storage area networks. Redundant data storage on hot-swappable drive untis to ensure that a hard drive failure doesn't stop the action. Automated backup facilities to ensure that data can be recovered in the event of a major failure. Disaster recovery facilities to ensure that there is an alternate data centre to operate the business in case of a major catastrophe.
As for whether keeping only six months of statement is broken, I'd say not. Personal financial software can be used to keep information downloaded from the financial institution. If you require more, then there is the option of paying for the service.
Carlos: you are right in something, but absolutely wrong otherwise: you say storage is cheap. Redundant storage isn't cheap then?
Hey, don't tell me you can't buy e.g. nine cheap harddisks at BestBuy and make three of them redundant with each other - possibility of crashing of three disk storing same information at the same time equals to zero. Sweet dreams.
Dusoft: That's an oversimplification. There are significantly more difficult infrastructure issues when you're dealing with a redundant database that is heavily accessed; it's not as simple as connecting a couple IDE cables and clicking a few times. There are also network configuration issues and upkeep costs.
"...possibility of crashing of three disk storing same information at the same time equals to zero."
Zero? Tell that to the tornado.
I'll give this one a "broken" IF AND ONLY IF the terms of usage explicitly state that the site keeps more than 6 months of transaction information.
To provide this service would not be cheap for them. Yes, hard drives are cheap, but the servers needed to handle all of those transactions (millions every *day*) are not. Furthermore, there are the costs associated with maintaining those machines, keeping them powered, etc. AmEx would have to hire at least one IT person to develop software for these machines and then keep the software optimized and debugged.
These are not negligible costs. AmEx already incurs these costs to allow you to access 6 months of data. If they kept a multiple of that amount of data, the costs would multiply as well. Are you willing to pay them to do that for you?
I also think the poster should take repsonsibility for his own recordkeeping. I keep track of my credit card purchases myself; I don't expect my credit card company to do that for me. The poster admits that he expects Amex to provide him with two year's worth of data because he doesn't want to do it himself.
FTR, the possibility of crashing of three disk storing same information at the same time is a small number, but it definitely larger than zero. Especially, as JM suggested, if all three disks are subject to the same condition that causes crashing at the same moment.
Yes, storing the daya would be expensive, but it's a multimillion-dollar company. If people switch to a different credit card because of this, Amex would be losing money. Also, there are good opportunities for advertisments based on a long storage period for transactions. Besides this site's point is to improve the customer experience. The cost is irrelevant.
I sent this to Mark because my little itty bitty home town credit union keeps detailed transaction history on my accounts going back to the day I signed up with them, as all banks have for me since my first bank went online in the mid 1990s.
I don't really care if AMEX has 50 mil customers and my local bank only has 5,000. It's silly to think of data on a computer "expiring" somehow and asking me to pay $5 to see the data after a certain window.
I build large web scale applications and I know this stuff is tough and I know storage is expensive in the banking industry, but seriously, this is the first time I've run into any online financial data that only went back six months instead of going back to day one of you becoming a customer.
I can pull up a record of my first Etrade transaction done in 1999 and my first check I used to pay a bill in 1997, but AMEX can't tell me what I spent $527 on in April of last year. That's broken.
Guaranteed, if you missed a payment 7 months ago, 3 years, 5 years... they'll know. The info is on file. Charging extra to access this info is just another way to make money. The data is being stored. Did a search online and found this figure: $750.9 billion is the total debt or 84 million Americans in 2002. Yah, a few thousand hard drives and servers can't be bought with the interest on that.... pah-leez. My electric company can tell me how many killowatt hours I was charged for 13 months ago, the amount and the average temperature for the month, but Amex can't tell me what I charged 7 months ago?
Personally, I think the whole idea of Amex is broken... lol
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Previous: Not: Apple iPod shuffle page | Main | Next: (Fun) Custom error messages
FWIW, it's not just Amex that does it. I have cards from 3 other banks (MBNA, Citibank, and a regional one) and they all only show the last 6 months online.
Posted by: anon at January 22, 2005 03:16 PM