AmEx CEO Says Company Was ‘Arrogant’ In ‘80s and ‘90s‏

American Express was cocky back in the day. That was the message American Express Co. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Chenault said Tuesday (March 31) at a speech at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management.

At the event, which was reportedly attended by a slew of high-profile executives from Boston-area corporations, Chenault revealed that in the 1980s and ‘90s AmEx “gained a reputation as being prestigious, elitist and expensive – and for years we reveled in those attributes.”

“We took our prestige so seriously that as a company, we too became elitist and arrogant,” he said.

Chenault’s remarks were particularly poignant for a Boston audience. In 1991, dozens of retailers in the region protested American Express in what came to be known as the “Boston Fee Party,” during which shops resisted the fees they were forced to pay every time a shopper paid with an American Express card.

Today, AmEx cards are still not accepted as widely as Visa and MasterCard cards are. But the firm has pushed against its elitist reputation in recent years, focusing on customer service initiatives and recently launching the OptBlue program that aims to lower fees for small businesses. Reports note that AmEx has also entered into storefronts where consumers buy everyday items to increase its presence. Just last year, for example, Dollar General began accepting AmEx cards.

It wasn’t easy, Chenault said, to convince consumers that American Express was not the stuck-up business it appeared to be. “We almost missed the boat,” he said. “But because of their historical relationship with our brand, our customers gave us time.”

American Express may have done some damage control with its customers, but with regulators, it’s not exactly smooth sailing. The firm revealed this week that it plans to appeal a ruling issued last month that allows retailers to suggest rival credit cards to consumers in efforts to avoid AmEx’s higher fees. According to AmEx general counsel Laureen Seeger, the issue at hand is whether the company is allowed to construct its contracts with merchants as it wishes.