I'm taking this one step at a time and at the moment I'm giving Amex the opportunity to resolve this. As I've said previously rapid resolution is far less important to me than appropriate resolution. I'd rather have Amex resolve it second time round and then ask them why they rejected it on the first go; why they accepted inadequate documentation as proof of my liability in the first place.

One reason I am holding back from contacting PC Corporate is that I am waiting for their response to another issue to see what bearing it might have on this matter:
Coincidentally, shortly after this charge appeared on my Amex account a phantom reservation appeared in my upcoming reservations list on priorityclub.com. This reservation is at a hotel I have stayed at very frequently and seems to have been made for some congress that has nothing to do with my field of work.
On my Upcoming Reservations page under Travel Profile it has N/A (all reservations I make have 3544quebec (Leisure) and under Originally Made By again it says N/A rather than 3544quebec.Clearly this reservation has been made outside pc.com and again I would surmise has been mistakenly linked to my profile.
This is somewhat different from the HI Brussels case where the reservation never appeared in my profile -another poster suggested earlier that it may not have been linked to my profile until after the no-show and that could very well be true as then it would not have appeared in my reservation list.The lucky interloper has been given my Royal Ambassador upgrade and the reservation currently has him/her in a King Bed Club Suite Ocean View ^^^


I do not think that this second incident represents anything other than a strange coincidence (unless of course a Honeywell link comes up!). If someone had hacked my account they have certainly not been fleecing me of my points. But this second occurence at the same time as the first is another reason why I don't simply want to call the GM of the HI Brussels and get the charge reveresd. There is a system problem within the hotels /IHG that needs to be addressed and I'm going to do my darnedest to make sure it is.

So I have sent an email (I prefer a paper trail to telephone calls) to the Ambassador Desk notifying them of this 2nd phantom reservation and asking them to explain how it has happened that a reservation that I have not made has been linked to my profile. I have told them that I think it raises serious concerns about the security and reliability of their systems. Once I have a reply to that I will ask them to look into the Brussels matter.

I don't disagree with any of the majority of posters who have and would say that in the time that it has taken for me to write this post I could have phoned the GM at the HI Brussels and got my refund (although I have had enough experience with telephone ping-pong to know that that is far from a given) but to me there are more important issues involved here than the E135 and at what point I get it back in my grubby little hands.