I have had terrible problems with Amex in the past. They are a great company if everything is good, but if you have even a small problem they turn into a nightmare to deal with.
Long story short......
I had a card with them. It was my first card and I got it at 18. I used it to help pay for school and other things. I never made a late payment and usually payed the full amount each month. One month after paying for school, books, rent, etc. I sent them $100 and they keyed it as $1001. Screwed up all my bank accounts (I was in college at the time and very poor) and I bounced 35 checks (thank God the bank helped me fix that) and I had not money for anything for a week. After that day Amex never recorded recieving payments from me. They cashed the checks and took the money, but it never showed on my account. After 6 months of this and speaking to probably 30 people (all of which saw the problem and claimed to fix it each time we spoke), they sent my account to collections at which time they claimed I owed double the balance of the account (about $2800). After 3 months of arguing, threatening, screaming, cussing, etc they finally agreed that they made the error, but were not willing to do anything to correct it or take the negatives off my credit report. They agreed that my balance was actually $1400 minus the $800 I had payed and they had not recording. So I owed them $600, but they still wanted $2800 everytime they spoke to me.
In the end, they took me to court (about 1.5 years later) and I faced off against their 11 lawyers. I won becasue my evidence was VERY solid that I only owed them $600. I agreed to pay the $600 and they agreed to get all the negatives off my credit report. However, I payed and they did nothing. I closed my account and worked for the next 2 years getting all that crap of my report and finally did.
Once my record was clean again, I actually got a call from Amex, telling me that I was now back in their good graces and that they would be happy to open another account with me. I was transfered 10 times when I started cussing people out and finally ended up with some VP of some crap. I told him that if they ever contacted me again for any reason that I would take them to court for harrasment and I would make sure that I got every penny I could form them.
They have yet to contact me again in any way.
My feeling? Pick another card.