What gives, are you any more charming than I am? I called Amex this afternoon to see if I could get bonus points for using my biz Gold card to pay taxes, and much as I wheedled, I was told "no" several times by several different Amex reps, though always very politely. (I don't know whether Amex starts with better recruits or just prepares its people better, but I do think they have a higher caliber of phone reps than just about any other company I have occasion to deal with.) They seemed not to care that they had told my fellow FTer sfducati he could pay his taxes with the card and get up to 100K MR. (sfducati, you're not putting us on about the 100K cap, are you?)

Anyway, I didn't leave completely empty-handed. The rep who addressed my question as an SPG Amex one did drop 3K into my SPG account to assuage my hurt feelings, and the biz Gold people came up with 2.5K MR to keep me, though I have never used the card and will cancel it at some point if I don't start feeling some love from them soon.