Disappointing experience indeed. A German friend of mine told me his Plat Amex was not replaced for him when he needed it in Singapore, his saga was similar to yours

I don't know about US-issued cards but in Hong Kong they pride themselves in 24 hour turnarounds. It's a feature they advertise on their site.

My HKG supplementary cardholder lost a card in Kuala Lumpur and this was in the middle of changing hotels. Amex HK called the hotels to guarantee payment, arranged some emergency cash and the next afternoon a motor bike courier delivered a new card to the hotel. The new card was not Platinum stock, but a special plastic card that is grey, has only 3 month expiration left on it and says something along the lines of "Temporary replacement card".

I lost a Plat IDC once when I was in Bangkok and they basically told Amex Thailand to cut me a new Plat Amex (that was on Thai stock so it had Thai customer service numbers on the back) and this was done the next day.

So it basically seems to depend on which market issues your card and where you will need your replacement card delivered. I am surprised that Canada have such a lame "office-hours-only" fax-based system. Doesn't make sense.

Was this perhaps a once-off issue where they were doing IT upgrades and had to resort to weird fax workflows ?