Although I have no doubt that the statements made in the consumerist article are accurate, the views presented in it essentially represent the frog's view from the bottom of the ditch. With large and even midly sophisticated banks, your profitability with respect to just one product, such as a credit card, typically has very little to do with your value to the bank. Instead, it is your profitability potential across all product lines that often has everything to do with the types of offers that you receive, the bank's willingness to bend over backwards to accommodate your wishes, etc...

When it comes to credit cards, each bank has tens of thousands of customers who are unprofitable but are nevertheless extremely valuable because of their potential profitability. The criteria for potential profitability is obviously somewhat subjective and depends, in part, not only on the specific people making that judgment but also on the types of services that a bank may be in the position to offer. For instance, a person with significant foreign assets can be extremely valuable to a bank like HSBC, which prides itself on global reach, but not nearly as valuable to a bank like BB&T, which does not count global reach as one of its core competencies.

Hence, the fact that a particular customer happens to be an extremely unprofitable credit card customer certainly does NOT mean that he/she will be unable to get preferred offers and fee waivers from that bank. If the customer is perceived as potentially profitable, and front line CSR's are not privy to all the decisions that affect the potential profitability analysis, the bank will often bend over backwards for such a customer. Banks gather the information that go into such an analysis from information sharing with their affiliates, credit bureaus (a prestigious foreign credit card appearing on the credit report, for instance, often tells the bank that the person may have significant foreign assets; certain types of credit cards issued by certain banks convey a message that a person would be a potential private bank candidate, etc...) and many other sources. This potential profitability analysis is the reason that many of us have very large credit lines with Chase and other banks that we have used for no other purpose than bonuses and 0% BT's and we still continue to receive premium service from those banks.

AMEX told me that the real payment due date is 30 days after the statement closes on charge cards. They said I can ignore what the web site or statement says. Since charge cards require the balance to be paid in full they allow more time to make the payment. I have been doing this since they told me and haven't experienced any fees or negative consequences.