Here is the story.  When I went to Mexico 3 months ago, I ordered
foreign currency on my American Express card.  However to date the
charge hasn't posted.  Before I called their customer service and ask
why I was curious about the following:

1) Is there anything they can do to me for failure to report a missing
charge (I'm thinking hitting me with back interest, penalties, etc)?
Nothing is mentioned on the card member agreement about this.

2) Is there a statute of limitations to when they have to call the
money lost (legally or through their own policy) and can't post the
charge, if so how long?  Again cardmember agreement says nothing.

3) Anything else significant and dangerous I should know about this
kind of situation?

The requirement is that anybody who answers this question must deliver
on points 1 and 2, point 3 I'll leave open to anything you might find
in the process of researching this.

---

Clarification of Question by tekiegreg-ga on 03 Jun 2005 14:21 PDT

Let me fix something... "Before I called customer service" should be
"Before I call customer service"...haven't called them yet.

Tekiegreg --

I'd check your credit card terms & conditions with Amex, though I
doubt that you'll find anything.  Instead, the time limit for a vendor
to submit charges to Amex are probably defined in their T&Cs.

I've had a similar situation occur with a major American vendor.  In
one case they finally billed us, 10 months after the charge was
incurred.  (It was on their house credit card.)  In the other case we
had to close a bank account on which we'd put a debit charge some 120
days earlier.  Our bank, a major national bank, said that their
merchant account agreements prohibiteed posting charges more than 30
days after the service.

-- Another important question for you is: what will be the exchange
rate if the transaction ever is posted?

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Well you've provided me some insights Omnivorous (though incomplete),
and since I know you're a Google Answerer I'll give you one of the
following choices

1) Since you delivered me aprroximately half, I'll lower the question
price to $3 and you can just answer it with nothing more (null
answer).

2) Continue researching and deliver the following for full credit:

A) Absent a credit card policy, is there any federal and/or state
guideline for when they can post a transaction?  I checked our member
agreement, so the answer is nothing from Amex, need to know about
overhanging law.

B) Can penalties and back interest be charged?  Again no answer in
their agreement so is there any law?  Anybody who ever had back
penalties/interest charged who posted about it online?

As far as currency goes, not an issue granted the charge was in American Dollars.

Let me know either way and I can adjust appropriately...

beware... I think most CC companies treat foreign currency exchanges
as a cash advance. It may appear on a different section of your bill.

I know this seems obvious, but Ockham is sometimes right.