Originally Posted by
BA_Jfan
World MasterCard and Visa Signature among other programs offer a phone concierge service. Whats the business model behind it? Do the CC companies make money, lose money, or break even on it?
Also, do people actually find them useful? I had tried the visa signature service once and found it just ok.
For World Mastercard, it depends. Your card issuer needs to be offering you the Mastercard concierge service. For instance, while Virgin Atlantic offers concierge service, it does not subscribe to World Mastercard concierge service and outsources it to someone else. So, I am speculating that the business model is they charge World and World Elite card issuers an annual fee for offering this service and it's probably a breakeven proposition of MC.
Regarding Visa Signature, read my post below. Looks like they recently decided to offer very focused concierge service dedicated to events and reservations and have moved away from a service that helps with one-off problems and chors.
The Visa move does not surprise me since almost every Visa card is a Signature card. It is so fragmented that they had to draw the line in the sand on what they could offer to the general public without being a cost burden. Of course, this dilutes most Visa Signature cards by at least 10%, IMHO.