The problem is not willingness to overnight - it's that once the request is made online, apparently no one can intervene and "upgrade" the shipping to overnight. I called 5 minutes after making the online request - it was too early....cards not in the system yet so they couldn't do anything. I then had @AskAmex team look into later in the day and they had no luck in intervening either - cards were already being processed and mailed standard. Nothing to be done now except wait. Oh well.