Last September, I wrote a post about cutting up my "gd" United Mileage Plus card in favor of just paying American Express $400 for a platinum card. That way, I theorized, I would get the kind of service using what's known as American Express Platinum Concierge. In theory, you call a special toll-free number and they get you what you want for travel and entertainment services, which are American Express's specialties.
That's not actually how it works. You do indeed call a special toll-free number. And you do get a friendly service representative, called a concierge, usually without waiting much. But after that, it isn't what I was expecting.
1) When you call the toll-free number, you have to choose 1) for travel services or 2) for reservations and other services. If you choose 1), that service representative can't do 2) so you have be put back in the queue or call back if you want to get theater tickets in London after getting the air tickets and hotel reservations to get to London in the first place.
2) The friendly concierge for 1) is trained to do what any reasonably sophisticated traveler would do themselves to figure out how to plan the trip. For instance, I go to kayak.com to check out routes and fares and airlines, figure out what's the best and then start buying tickets. The American Express concierge does the same thing, although I suspect I get better information from kayak.com than whatever system she was using. And, here's the trick: You have to stay on the line while they're doing it. So it ends up being a race between how fast you could have done it yourself and how fast they can do it. The concierge lost the first time I tried to do this, because the service representative was not smart to understand the concept that I wanted to land in any English airport from Birmingham to London (which includes about six airports that take international flights from the US), since I would be driving from one to three hours after landing and was trying to optimize my departure city, not my arrival city.
I gave up after an hour on the phone. I was able to do the complex routing that also included flying on to Moscow and Amsterdam and back to San Francisco; it took me a couple of hours in front of my computer. But I got exactly what I wanted for a cost that was about half of what the first concierge was quoting. The concierge did not understand the concept of booking economy and upgrading with miles; did not understand that concept of landing at one airport and taking off at another (not to mention that big cities often have more than one airport); did not understand the concept of pretty much anything that an experienced flier understands from painful experience. So... I don't think I'll call American Express Platinum Concierge for travel booking again, just so I can spend twice as much time having someone who knows half as much as I do make me tell her how to do her job.
3) American Express has the concept of profiles, but they don't actually reflect the human beings they have to deal with. Bear with me: in my first experience, I learned that you can only charge to a Platinum American Express card. My trip was mixed business and personal travel and I wanted to be able to charge different pieces of it to my business American Express card and other pieces on my personal American Express card, which is the one that was Platinum. Nope, not allowed (even though the business card is also American Express!). So I upgraded the business card to Platinum, thinking that now I could get the concierge to charge some things to one and some to the other, depending on whether they are personal or business.
I called back. I had already gone and gotten all my air tickets and hotels for the trip, so now i just wanted the concierge to find a town car to take me from LGW to LGH so I can get home at the end of the trip. I also figured I could get the concierge to get me some theater tickets while I was in London earlier in the trip. Nope! Concierge 1) only deals with travel and, when requesting a town car, only is authorized to deal with two American limo companies. (That's how you earn the discounts that American Express has so thoughtfully negotiated.) So Carey Limo came back (while I was waiting on hold) with a cost of $490 -- for a 45-minute transfer between two airports! That's almost more than my Premium Economy ticket on Virgin Atlantic from LHR to SFO!
4) Then I asked about the theater tickets and Concierge 1) said I would have to talk to Concierge 2). And when I asked her to update my profile with my second Platinum card, she said that I would have to have a separate profile for the second card! I assume that means I will also have to call back each time I want to use a different card.
So what was it that I wanted? Pay $400 a year for customer service because it's got to be better than the way that United Airlines and Citibank treat me when they give me miles? Oh, well. I guess I'm just not paying enough. I hear American Express has a black card.
