Here in Australia, the Starwood Platinum benefit was dropped after one year (in 2005) and the same fingerpointing exercise occurred.
I pushed and pushed to get to the bottom of it, and was eventually advised off the record that Starwood had comped Amex the Platinum status for Centurions at the outset, but had a contract permitting them to charge Amex per member.
After one year, Starwood elected to do so, reportedly at a cost of A$500 (US$ 300 at the time) per member - I can't precisely remember the amount, and they wouldn't put this in writing. As soon as Amex was no longer getting something for nothing they decided to drop the Starwood Platinum benefit, not realising that for their clients it was worth more than every other benefit combined.
The irony is, if Amex asked us "would you pay an extra $500 for annual Starwood Platinum status in addition to your annual fee?", I suspect 99% of us would agree.
I recently did a Centurion benefits questionairre, and like at least 80% of people pointed out that hardly any airlines are left in the companion program, that the companion gets no miles, but above all that only SPG Platinum and free Mandarin Oriental and Raffles hotel nights make the black card worthwhile.
24 hours later I discovered they had cancelled the Raffles free night from 1/1/2007!