American Express finds error almost 3 years late

Just got a letter from American Express today saying that they found an error in my account from a payment back in 2001! The upshot of it all is that they now want to debit me an extra €717 to make up for it, the original was in punts. In the letter they said I had 10 days to check my own records and then they would charge me. Sadly I only keep credit card statements for 12 months so have no easy way of checking all this, I assume they are correct but given the amount of overcharging by banks in the news recently, who knows.

Just wondering if anyone has any advice or has ever run into a similar situation?

I'm almost certainly going to cancel my Amex card because of this in any case as how can you trust a system that turns up errors this like this three years later.

Hang on to those statements would seem to be the moral of the story!

Can you explain the nature of the error? Are these purchases which were never charged to your account, or what?

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They said it was in relation to a payment made by cheque in June 2001 that they credited to the account a second time in February 2002. Why they would do this, I've no idea nor did they say. Now they want to debit me €717 to make up for it. I don't remember this happening but of course can't prove it one way or the other.

I religiously pay off my credit card bill every month but will find an extra €717 that I didn't budget for a bit of a stretch as I am just now paying for a holiday I took in September.

At a minimum, I would be expecting them to produce copy statements for the periods in question to confirm the position and agree to an extended repayment period (e.g. six months).