DH- Thanks for the info......especially re the crappy car rental coverage. I will thus continue to use my (free) Private Issue card as it gives superior PRIMARY coverage.

Mentioning this at dinner last night one of the guys showed me his new Costco Amex card. It said nothing re Optima. On scanning the kmart-sized listing of cards on the Amex site this AM , I came across this Costco card that looked like the dinner guy's card:
http://home1.americanexpress.com/app...h.asp?Entry=20

It sure looks like http://home3.americanexpress.com/car...d_checkbox.asp except for the small line saying "rebate". Think it would allow me to enter a airline lounge?

I too received varying answers from the nice Amex CS people.