The fifth Golden Turkey Awards

Thanksgiving is upon us and with it, once again, the Gibbs Golden Turkey Awards. These awards focus on those individuals, companies or entities that don't, won't or can't come to grips with reality, maturity, ethical behavior or social responsibility because of their blindness, self-imposed ignorance, thinly veiled political agenda, rapaciousness and greed, or blatant desire to return us to the Dark Ages.

In this fifth edition I'm going to focus on a single company for three reasons: First, it exemplifies what happens when you have a heady combination of really bad data management strategy, awful customer service and terrible internal communications; second, its behavior is typical of bad decision-making that is being driven by the current financial crisis; and, third, it has managed to really annoy me.

The company I am about to lambaste (the kind of basting the Golden Turkey Awards are designed to do) is -- envelope, please [sounds of ripping] -- American Express.

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Thanksgiving is upon us and with it, once again, the Gibbs Golden Turkey Awards. These awards focus on those individuals, companies or entities that don't, won't or can't come to grips with reality, maturity, ethical behavior or social responsibility because of their blindness, self-imposed ignorance, thinly veiled political agenda, rapaciousness and greed, or blatant desire to return us to the Dark Ages.

In this fifth edition I'm going to focus on a single company for three reasons: First, it exemplifies what happens when you have a heady combination of really bad data management strategy, awful customer service and terrible internal communications; second, its behavior is typical of bad decision-making that is being driven by the current financial crisis; and, third, it has managed to really annoy me.

The company I am about to lambaste (the kind of basting the Golden Turkey Awards are designed to do) is -- envelope, please [sounds of ripping] -- American Express.

Here's where Amex went wrong: I'm still on the road delivering the keynote speech at the last of an Oracle-sponsored "Identity Management Breakthroughs" tour. A couple of weeks ago I checked into my hotel in San Francisco. I proffered my Amex card and, horror of horrors, it was declined.

I have been -- or rather was -- a customer for 23 years, only the likes of Bill Gates have better credit, and my payment history is damn near perfect. It turned out that while I drove from Pasadena to San Francisco, American Express reviewed my account and those of God only knows how many other customers, and dropped our limits.

Amex apparently has serious cash-flow problems and, like every other financial business, has its hand out for a chunk of the bailout funds. Given the circumstances, it is easy to see that it looked at my account, saw me spending a fair amount of money over a short period, and wham! No more credit.

It wasn't until the next day that I got an e-mail informing me of the decision; and a few more days beyond that, a detailed and frankly lame explanation arrived. Unfortunately, that's pretty much the response you might expect from a large corporation moving into desperation mode.

But here's the thing: Since the fateful decision, American Express has sent me no less than six credit card offers. The last one arrived on the same day as the explanation of why it lowered my credit limit, and offered me a $22,000 credit line!

So, let's sum up where American Express went wrong: First, it has a huge amount of customer data to mine, but when it decided to limit its risks it apparently sorted its accounts using what must have been some simple criteria that didn't put enough weight on customer history and, wham! It made the cut. Not smart.

Second, how on earth could it offer credit to people it just deemed unworthy? Now, you might assume that if I had taken it up on one of its offers, I would have been turned down, but I'm not so sure.

Third, just consider that if it sent me half a dozen offers, it has done the same to hundreds of thousands of other people at a high cost when it is supposedly strapped for cash!