American Express Membership Rewards - Centurion Success Story

Well, we've all heard plenty of complaints so it's time to give credit where credit is due. Had a reservation to fly home from Palm Beach, FL to Newark last night. All flights were significantly delayed due to weather. My flight was originally to have landed in Newark at 10:30 PM but I got email after email from Continental saying the arrival would be no earlier than "x". When the arrival time hit 4:00AM, I decided to try to bail and see if I could get out early the next morning.

Looked on the Continental website and Sunday's non-stops were all sold out - not one seat available. The only options they gave me was to fly through Houston! That's when I decided to call Centurion Travel.

The agent was amazing. Immediately told me he found one single seat on the first flight out on Sunday morning and begged me to take it. He said there was a good chance I would wait around for nothing and then have no way of getting home on Sunday. I agreed and he made the reservation. I then walked, cellphone in hand, to the desk by the gate and explained what the agent had done. They said they were shocked as there were no seats available all day,but that they could not swap my ticket for the one he booked - some technical stuff that sounded ridiculous.

The AMEX guy finally told me to let him speak to the agent. I gave her my phone and her entire attitude changed. Next thing I know, another agent is taking me to the ticketing desk to print me a written ticket and I was all set. This NEVER would have happened without the help of my AMEX agent.

That said, I know that weather delays happen and that it was no Continental's fault, but the attitude of the employees and the way they interacted with people asking simple, reasonable and polite questions was a total disgrace. It all culminated with an hour wasted back in Newark while they tried to find my checked luggage that was sitting at their feet the entire time and, you got it, nary an apology. Airline travel gets worse and worse but at least this time I felt I had someone on my side. Thanks to AMEX CTS!

how exactly did the attitude change? did you ask the CTS guy what he said? id be curious to hear reaction from CO forum as well.

In retrospect, it seemed it was simply a little extra work to take an electronically issued ticket and merge it to a new record. Cancelling and starting over again would most certainly have meant losing the one seat.

He explained that she should simply reissue it as a paper ticket. In the end, I think he wouldn't take no for an answer and forced them all to do the little bit of extra work that would take care of his customer and their Gold Elite patron. I would have had no way of knowing that they were blowing smoke when they said it couldn't be done - he knew better and called them on it. Once they were resigned to help me, I guess they figured they might as well be nice about it!

It seems like there is a lot of complaining about centurion. Glad to hear a good story. It seems like those who have a bad experience are always the most vocal. I have Platinum myself and have been happy although I have never asked them to jump through to many hoops.

Did you purchase the original ticket through CTS or with CO directly? If it was originally purchased through CO, how did the CTS fees work out? Sounds like their fee was worth it in this case, I'm just wondering how they would have handled the situation had the original ticket been purchased elsewhere.