I'm not surprised by this. To be fair, the PP lounges vary somewhat in quality (we're lucky in SFO to have pretty much the best domestic PP lounge of the bunch), but C1 (at least in DEN) is far better than any. We've only had the opportunity to use it a handful of times, but maybe have lucked out with good times where line was short to non-existent.

I would think they could at least discount the cost for C1 lounges for VentureX cardholder guest (/AU) compared to, say, a Venture cardholder. Or at least include some amount of guest passes/year.