Jonesdds

I wanted to share a story with you all, AMEX platinum has been our go to personal card for 25 plus years and I've felt in the past the customer service was on par with the cost of the card. No longer......

Booking a 25th wedding anniversary trip to London, Venice, Florence and end in Rome. Flights are booked, SPG holding the Gritti Palace and Florence St. Regis until I can get the Membership Reward points moved over. That's when the real issues began.....

I've got a hyphenated last name. Not ridiculously long, 15 characters with the hyphen. Visa, MC typically has no issues making my full first name and last name fit with the hyphen. AMEX, can't do it. Can't use a hyphen and can't spell out my last name with even part of my first name. So, we've always had our first and middle initial as the first name and the full last name without the hyphen, a space in the name. No big deal, right? Wrong!

SPG has had no issues with our name, fully spelled out properly, with a hyphen. But, when I transfer points from AMEX to SPG it gets kicked back due to mismatch of the name. So, I had SPG remove the hyphen, still gets kicked back. I can link the accounts on the AMEX or by calling but can't do the transfer. Even changed the name on SPG acct, the first name to mimic the AMEX initials, no luck. I've asked AMEX to put a hyphen in, can't do it. Ridiculous!

I've spent no less than 6 hours on this. I'm on vacation so have the time but soon will not. AMEX can't make this work and either can SPG. I keep telling both of them to change the last name to the full name without hyphens or spaces but they just don't get it and SPG seems to feel I've got to jump through a bump of hoops to do this even though twice they changed the name over the phone without hassle. Everyone at AMEX and SPG has a different story to tell as well. Seems so simple, so ridiculous yet it's not. You'd think I'm transferring a million dollars between account....

Well that's my rant. Over $500k spent with AMEX to earn these points and they are useless. Well, no more, I'm done with them!

Kendryk

I understand how this issue must have been very frustrating. Might I suggest that you try calling Amex and ask them to help you with this by holding a conference call with SPG and get it sorted between the two of them on the line?

Jonesdds

Done twice already to no avail. Supposedly they are working on it together but I highly doubt it. Amex said 3 days ago they would work on it and get back with me in 24-48 hrs. But of course I've heard nothing. I don't expect this to ever be resolved and each company seems to blame the other and offer no solution. According to my calculations these points are worth $9000 plus and they are holding my money hostage.

mia

I have edited the thread title to describe the specific problem. I would contact the official Starwood Representative on Flyertalk:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/membe...od-lurker.html

Jonesdds

Well, problem solved. I kept telling AMEX I thought the problem was that in some system my wife's name was only the last half of the hyphenated full name and finally with the 10th agent he found where it was and fixed it. And he seemed somewhat inept so what does that say about the rest? They had my wife's middle initial and the first part of the last name(partial) in the middle name area! ... Actual had a call from a fantastic SPG agent, good willed a lot to help and changed the name to reflect the erroneous spelling, I transferred points, then was able to get the name changed with AMEX. Was given 25k points from AMEX but feel I'm do more since they were the problem. I will be writing an email.

Funny thing too is I got a call from AMEX telling me they did everything they could and I needed to resolve with SPG. Ridiculous!

Moral of the story, make sure the name with Membership rewards is the same as the account and on card as well as what Membership Rewards Fraud team sees. Also, when you link Membership rewards to an airline or hotel program, make sure the selected card your linking shows the name in full that matches with the membership rewards name and the program your linking. I think it's last name that matters most but I'd make them identical down to the spaces and case.

Bottom line is AMEX ... needs to have some people to contact when the stupid people they hire can't help