American Express Membership Rewards - Qualifying for Centurion

I don't claim to know how to qualify for Centurion but these are my thoughts on it.

There are many conflicting stories about the criteria for a Centurion card. It obviously makes sense that those people who spend the most should achieve elite status and extra benefits for being a good customer. Amex, however, do not view the Centurion card as an elite card but simply a marketing ploy to manipulate its membership to spend more.

Those people who don't have it, spend more to try and qualify for it. Those people who have qualified for it, tend to spend more because of the upgrade, according to Amex. Needless to say, the Centurion card is an excellent example of effective marketing as was the Platinum card when that was first introduced.

Platinum has now been diluted and no longer an elite product. It is only a matter of time before Amex introduces another elite card to supersede the Centurion card.

A friend of mine just told me today that he knows someone in the UK who claims that he has a white Amex for which he paid £1,000. I don't know if this is true but I wouldn't be surprised if Amex is experimenting with yet another elite card. (I would have thought that a clear card would have been the way forward for the next elite card though.)

When one realises that Amex is using elite cards to manipuate its membership in order to increase spending, then it should be clear that all one needs do to be invited for any of the elite cards, is to reduce spending and not increase it.

It is logical to assume that once expenditure has been reduced, Amex will attempt to increase that person's spending by offering a card upgrade.

That's my theory anyway http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

Moriarty, two things. Firstly, the product is a litle different in the US than it is overseas. What the folks on this board want is the instant elite status available from several major domestic airlines, which offers upgrade opportunities. As I'm sure you know, unlike Europe, where the front cabin is the same, and only the meal and drink sevice changes, domestic US flights have a dedicated First Class, with larger seats and more legroom. It would take much more than the $1000 fee to reach these elite levels by buying tickets. Secondly, as for your theory, I have been an Amex cardholder since the early sixties. I have shown them that my collective spending on Diners, and an airline affinity Visa I use, exceeds any threshold they have ever suggested. I have sent back my Platinum card, and cancelled the account in protest, and they still stiffed me. At this point, I wouldn't take the thing if they offered it, as I see it for what it is, and totally agree with your analysis. In addition, I now hold higher elite status on two of the three participating airlines than what comes with the card, so that feature has lost its appeal. I can't be the only customer they have alienated over this issue, and frankly, I fail to see how this works for them, much less how they can think it is productive marketing.

Obviously you're correct in saying that the Amex Platinum is a different product in each country.

The Platinum card in the UK has fewer benefits than its US counterpart as does the Centurion card.

Centurion barely offers any extra benefits over Platinum in the UK. The only benefit to me personally is the fact that I wouldn't have to think about requalifying for elite hotel status each year and, although I earn that status through hotel stays anyway, it's nice to have a safety net.

Platinum used to be a rarity in the UK but Amex made many more invitations once the Centurion was launched to the extent that it is now common place. So much so, in fact, that Amex ran out of Platinum plastic with which to make the cards when they first made the big push to issue them.

I believe that Amex will have to increase the differential in benefits between Platinum and Centurion and, to this end, they will claw back some of the benefits enjoyed currently by Platinum card members.

I know that customer satisfaction surveys have been issued to judge responses to the Concierge service, however, one of questions on the survey asked how important the service was for the member to renew his/her membership of the Platinum card.

Amex is flying high at the moment but, I believe that, if Amex continue to manipulate its membership in this manner, a time will come when many more members will turn their backs, just as you have done.

Deelmakur, because AMEX receives monthly credit bureau reports, it hardly needs your input to know your spending on other cards.

Moriarity,

I think you are mistaken in the comparison of benefits of The Platinum Card between the UK and the Us. I'm sure that many US members would rather have the UK version. In terms of the Centurion Card, The US versions does seem to have a few better benefits, but they don't get 2 Priority Passes and some of the other UK stuff.

UK Centurion offers the following over UK Platinum:-

2 Priority Passes instead of 1
Uprated Travel insurance on all cards with No Excess
24 Hour Travel Service at all times (Uk Plat have Emergency travel facilities for travel in the next 48 hours)
Dedicated Account Manager
Dedicated Centurion Team for all aspects, Concierge, Membership Rewards, travel etc.
3 Black Cards and 4 Platinum Cards
Gold Hilton VIP Level for lifetime of the account
Centurion Status

All the above for £550 per year.

IMHO If you can afford £225 a year for Platinum, you are not that really bothered about the other £325.

Hedoman, unless you see credit reports that I don't, all they show is with whom you have an account, how timely your payments are, and any outstanding balances at the time of the report. In the case of individuals who pay these currently, they would not see any semblance of what someone's annual activity is. While I am certain they monitor the credit of many of their customers, I would doubt that such checks are done more than once a year. I make it a point to review my own credit reports each year. These routinely contain indications of who has requested them, and I do not recall seeing Amex. As a customer since 1962, they had to work pretty hard to lose my business.

I don't know which credit bureau's reports you have been looking at, but they usually do show your monthly balance on each card. At least my credit reports do.

d

That's my point. They show any outstanding balance at the time of the printout. You would have to pull the report every month,and catch it before a payment was applied. They don't have the time, inclination, or resources for that. The assertion was that Amex knows what its customers spend with other card vendors. I am certain they don't track that on a regular basis. Any review of current customer reports is to make sure nothing has changed relative to their credit profile. My 26 year old kid was just moved to a Gold card. It has to be based on her payment record. Her salary wouldn't justify such an increase, and she barely has a credit history.

In my opinion, in makes sense not to upgrade the top 4000 or so customers to Centurion Level. Why? Very easy. People like, let´s say, Boris Becker definitely will have Amex Plat. OK, they could be upgraded. But would they care? No, they wouldnt. They dont need HHonord Gold VIP oder SPG Plat, they dont need special Shopping Assignments and higher insuranced. They even dont need a concierge. So they wont make more dollars than before. Because of that, it´s smarter to upgrade those people who travel a lot but dont always use Platin CardTravel Service to convince them that it makes sende to book with Amex. And to book by phone doesnt have only advantages. Sometimes, it´s nicer to speak to someone who you can see, hanging about some brochures to discuss and so on.

deelmakur,

My credit report from Experian actually does show a historical record of the balance each month for each card. It's in s separate section from the main section, which shows current balance, credit limit, and payment history. This other section has each account, and the balance on that account for each of the last 24 months.

So, someone looking at your credit report can't really tell how much you're spending each month vs. just carrying a balance on your card. But they definately have historical data on what your balances have been each month (not just what they currently are). At least this is true for Experian.

Hadn't noticed that. I am, however certain they don't monitor customers that closely in regard to analyzing competitive spending. Even if they did, it fails to explain why they wouldn't use the product to move the business over. I have run successful businesses for years, and we have always recognized the importance of taking share from competitors. The motivation is not just to build our business, but just as importantly, to weaken theirs.

This was given to an associate of mine by Amex

Criteria for Acceptance

- >$45,000 in Amex charges for last six months
- No late pays with Amex in prior 12 months
- Beacon Score of 720 or higher
- Income requirement loose but over $200K/yr
- Willingness to pay $1,000/yr for the below:

(1) Airline FF Packages
- Delta Gold Elite
- TWA Aviator Elite
- Continental Gold Elite
(2) $1.5M Travel Accident Insurance
(3) Hotel Gold Status
- Hilton
- Hyatt
- Starwood
- Intercontinental
(4) Airline Lounge Clubs
(same as Platinum)
(5) Personal Concierge and Travel Agent
(6) Free International Cell Phone
- No shipping fees
- No rental fees (just pay for calls)
(7) Buyer's Assurance Extended to 3 years beyond manf. warranty


TW

Sorry Tolarian, but the above details are not very accurate. See other posts under Centurion Redux for the real deal.

There is actually no reliable information about the criteria Amex uses to select the future Centurion cardholders from the Platinum card base.

The criteria differs from country to country, depending on the market situation
(UK was the first (test) market in 1999,
the US and Germany followed).

For example, the top 1% german Platinum cardholders charge less than the top 1% US members ...

I'll stand by my original post. Also, AMEX can easily program their software to pickup whatever they want off a credit bureau report. You don't really think they have humans scanning monthly credit reports, do you? And monthly credit reports is what they receive....at least on me, last time I looked.

And I have never been able to figure out what is learned from a $10,000 balance on a VISA card.

As noted previously, from Al Kelly, American Express Group President, US Consumer and Small Business Services, on February 7, 2001 :

...we have issued over 4,000 Centurion Card accounts, each at a fee of $1,000 a year. These Centurion Cardmembers, on average, spend much more than Platinum Cardmembers, who are heavy spenders themselves.

Looking at same index I showed a few minutes ago, you see that the average Centurion account spends at 2,862, vs. Personal at 100, and Platinum at 621.

When looking at this trend, you may think that we simply took the top accounts from the Platinum base and gave them Centurion Cards, thus diluting the quality of the Platinum portfolio. This is not true! In fact, the top 4,000 Platinum Card accounts have 2.8 times higher average spend than the average spend of the Centurion base.
http://home3.americanexpress.com/corp/corpinfo/fcm0102/ak-p1.asp
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum69/HTML/000490.html

The information I received was from somone who was on the phone with the Centurion people speaking with them directly about his account.

The world is filled with bad information, I suppose they could have been less truthful.

TW

Ummmm....all I was trying to say was that if you're a Platinum card holder and want a Centurion card, try spending less instead of more - that's all.

Originally posted by Moriarty:
A friend of mine just told me today that he knows someone in the UK who claims that he has a white Amex for which he paid £1,000. I don't know if this is true but I wouldn't be surprised if Amex is experimenting with yet another elite card.

Am consulting my source...

I must be ignorant, but what is a "Beacon Score of 720 or higher" mean. I hope it doesn't mean that you can't complain too much, because then I would never qualify for a used Amex ashtray.

Thanks.

If you really want the Centurion, I don't think spending less with AMEX is the way to go, but that's just my opinion. The requirements for the card are apparently very complex, and based on a whole range of factors, and trying to boil it down to a list of criteria is pointless I would imagine.

Some have said if you spend $xxx,xxx a year you'll get it. I'm sure there is a number that if you spend that much and ask for it, you'll get it, BUT that most likely is not the minimum spend to qualify.

As for Beacon, that's another name for the Fair Isaac Credit Assessment system (actually, I think it's a proprietary system similar to Fair Isaac, maybe not exactly the same), anyway, it takes the info in your credit report then "scores" you as to credit worthiness.

If anything ... 720 sounds kind of low, but I'm not expert ...

Didnt find out much regarding the "white card"... here is what my source provided..

"Could be true...is hard for me to verify card products outside the US since they are developed and issued by the foreign AMEX banks, not Centurion Bank located in Salt Lake City, UT..."

There are three main credit scoring systems, namely Equifax's Beacon, TRW's FICO and Transunion's Empirica which predicts the likelihood that an existing account or potential credit customer will become a serious credit risk. These scores reflect your re-payment habits, number of credit items, length of time you have had a credit item, number of times someone has accessed your credit, number of times you have moved, and your debt to income ratio. You can increase this score by removing poor credit items.

Beacon has a minimum credit score of 400 with a maximum of 844. Generally speaking, a credit score of 680 or above is excellent.

Your Beacon score, Fair Isaac score, and Empirica score are not furnished with credit reports, and are difficult to obtain.

See this article for more information:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/04/06/BU21650.DTL

Any ideas on how to get them?

www.qspace.com (http://www.qspace.com) will sell you your credit report online for about $8, and for another $3 or so you can get your credit score. While it isn't an exact Beacon or FICO, they claim it closely approximates what your score would be. It also gives you some information on what factors on your report are increasing or decreasing your score.

While it isn't perfect, you don't really need the exact score; for $11 it's worth it to get an idea of what your score is.

d

Is there an exclusive website in the US or UK for Centurion card members only?

FunnyNYC,

a) Welcome to FlyerTALK
b) There is www.departures.com (http://www.departures.com) which is meant to be for US Platinum (Proper Platinum Cards, Not Optimas etc) & Centurion Cardmembers, but UK members can get access to. There is a www.centurioncard.de (http://www.centurioncard.de) for German Centurion Cardholders.

Thanks,
Richard

I can access Departures.com (french Platinum), but french cardmembers don't get the magazine...

---

No Centurion card in France this year, my Plat customer service sayed http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

On a separate thread, I mentioned that if you have a Fidelity Platinum card, you will never qualify for Centurion.

Now I have a new question for the experts here. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

If two people charge to a single, standard, Platinum account, do their combined charges count toward Centurion qualification?

TIA for everyone's thoughts on this matter.

Speaking of Beacon / FICO / credit scores, Experian and Fair Issac announced today that they'll be selling one's actual FICO credit score on the Web by the end of the month...

d

Ironically, many of the very customers Amex would want to attract as Centurion cardmembers probably have relatively low Beacon scores. That is because one of the biggest factors in a Beacon score is the person's outstanding credit card debt. But unfortunately the credit bureaus do not distinguish between debt that is carried as a balance, and debt that is paid off in full each month. So, for example, the credit report of Person A, who has carried a $50,000 in credit card balances for the past two years, looks exactly like the credit report of Person B, who charges $50,000 of business expenses every month, pays off his/her cards in full at the end of each month, and then does the same thing month after month. Amex would probably love to have Person B as a Centurion member, but his/her Beacon score would be the same as Person A's, and both of them would probably have relatively low scores because they have such a large outstanding "debt" on their credit reports.

Airships, you are absolutely correct. I just tried my report from the link above and I got dinged for having a large balance on my Centurion card. Never mind that I pay it off each month. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

I pulled mine, and a car lease I have, with 3 years to run, shows as outstanding debt. Since they have no idea of a person's liquid assets, they not only can't distinguish something like this from real debt, they also can't view it in the context of what it might represent as a percentage of a person's total net worth. Dumb.

Some info for those who are interested:

On another thread, I noted that for a Centurion upgrade, you could not have a branded Platinum Card (Fidelity, etc.). This was per a conversation with a Centurion rep.

I wrote Mr. Kelley, and two different Amex wonks called me a week later to tell me that that policy has changed. You can now get upgraded from a Fidelity card. Furthermore, Amex will consider spending on all personal cards as part of its qualification screening.

Both of them also mentioned the $150k per year minimum. Since it seems that this minimum is not real, I can only hope the rest of their information is correct.

I was told the same regarding the $150k but was told that was the amount for the past year of spending. I asked if they required that I charge that amount each year in the future. The rep said no. They only want to see the past year at $150k. She said they do combine all personal cards but will not consider any business card.

This topic reminds me discussions trying to determine which tax returns the IRS audits: there are no clear cut or published rules, anecdotes point in conflicting directions, and no one will give you a straight answer.

(Sorry, currently doing my taxes online, and it hurts, as always)

Originally posted by wigstheone:
Sorry, currently doing my taxes online, and it hurts, as always

I owe again, but it is better than giving the government an interest free loan for a year. You are doing this when you receive ANY type of refund. So imagine receiving a US$2,000 refund. This is US$2,000 you could have had during the year. It is also US$2,000 that you have let the government borrow, free of charge...

Understood. I just get cranky this time of the year, whether giving or receiving, over the whole notion of what I am contributing. And yes, of course, I recognize the many benefits one receives as a taxpayer, citizen, etc., but that really does little to assuage the sting of reviewing a year's payments.