Originally Posted by
Artpen100
By the way, got a callback from AmexTravel an hour ago. Hit 1 as instructed, and it told me that due to call volume to try again, then hung up.
Wow. So I guess I shouldn't feel too bad about not getting called back at all. (Except that there were five mysterious phone calls from two phone numbers in Arizona at 4:50 a.m. Eastern time, 2:50 a.m. Arizona time, yesterday morning. I had left a callback request at 1 pm the previous afternoon. My phone was turned off when the calls came in, but I called Amex Travel a couple more times yesterday and left call back numbers. No callbacks these times, not even at 4 a.m.
So then I tried the method suggested in a post above: calling Amex Platinum Travel and asking them to connect me to Amex Travel (to which the Plat agents refer as "online support"). I tried this three times and spoke to sympathetic and capable Amex Plat agents. They all connected me to what they said was a faster-but-still-not-very-fast track to "online support" (Orbitz dba Amex Travel). All three times I got the same result I had gotten when I called directly: music for between 15 and 45 minutes, then a minute or so of silence, then what sounded like someone was picking up the phone (including on some occasions background noise with someone talking to someone else), then the call was disconnected, apparently having been hung up manually.
I have nothing against outsourcing, but I don't like being deceived. If American Express is going to continue outsourcing its online travel business to this outfit, they need to have clear warnings at the time of booking: "You are now leaving American Express and will be doing business with our partners at Stinky's Midnight Econo-Travel and Towing Service. If you should ever need a refund, change in itinerary, or other service, please contact Stinky's, and may God have mercy on your soul."