mia

It appears (to me) that American Express's objective is to steer as much business as possible to the outsourced Amex Travel, and eventually PTS will disappear. Like the Concierge, PTS is a relic of the pre-internet era. It was designed to complete with your local travel agency, but now we live in a self-service economy, and I don't see a financially viable model where Expedia handles the routine transactions and another agency only deals with the complex cases for a small fee.

Kacee

It might well be financially viable, but the 100% outsource model is undoubtedly considerably cheaper and easier. As Amex continues to go ever farther downmarket with the Platinum card, I've no doubt you're right that the days of PTS are numbered. What Amex ought to be doing is insisting on higher quality service from Expedia, especially with Chase and now Cap One improving their proprietary booking channels.

synzero

I'm also worried that Amex will completely eliminate Platinum Travel Service. On the other hand, the customer service from AmexTravel.com / Expedia is SO awful and people complain about it SO much that I wonder if they are at all worried about the marketing hit to their brand that continues on because of how terrible AmexTravel.com is when it comes to anything that goes wrong, flight changes, etc. Even though they've been adding downmarket benefits, they still have a very large number of upscale and upper middle class members who have the card for some of these premium services. If they go 100% towards cost cutting the brand becomes no different from any of the other issuers, and it seems to me they will see an exodus of high income customers.

Chase and Capital One now use cxLoyalty and Hopper for their travel portals, both of which are vastly superior to Expedia - AmexTravel is an albatross for Amex it seems to me. Amex customer service is one of their key selling points but AmexTravel is just a black eye for them IMO.

Also worth noting that PTS also services Platinum and Centurion customers abroad, and they don't "hide" the PTS number the way they do in the US. It is worth noting that if you call card services and ask for "travel" it still does go to PTS, not Expedia. So PTS is still there in some sense.

FWIW when I speak to PTS agents they don't seem even slightly concerned that their operation is going to be shut down. They speak confidently and they seem to indicate they have support from management. Honestly, if it weren't for PTS I would never book any flight with Amex, 5x or no 5x. Just not worth the risk.

mia

If American Express wanted to continue to operate their own consumer travel agency they would not have outsourced Amex Travel to Travelocity in 2004. They switched to Orbitz in 2011. Expedia acquired Travelocity -and- Orbitz in 2015, and that's how Expedia came to be the service provider for American Express. We didn't see widespread expressions of dissatisfaction with Expedia until the lockdown phase of the pandemic when travel providers were simply refusing refunds and changing policies frequently. I don't think we can judge Expedia's longterm service from that period when everyone struggled.

Chase owns cxLoyalty, and only transitioned their portal from Expedia a week ago. It's premature to judge their relative performance, but what we do know is that cxLoyalty does not book hotels directly, they shop bookings for the best price (for their benefit, not ours), and many hotel bookings are placed through Expedia because their share of the consolidator market is huge.

synzero

Good points, but Amex really had no choice but to outsource it in 2004. Amex doesn't have the technology to be able to run a full-fledged web-based OTA and all that entails. But note the date: they first outsourced this in 2004, and Platinum Travel Service continues on to this very day. They haven't shut it down for 17 years - surely the cost advantages of shutting it down would have been as obvious 15 years ago as it is now, yet PTS survives. Maybe this will change but they don't seem to be in a huge hurry. And I think as I noted earlier there are a significant number of high value customers who still use it.

I agree that Expedia complaints got far worse during the pandemic but I've been reading online horror stories about Expedia for many years before the pandemic.

cxLoyalty used to run Chase's travel portal before Expedia, and again, based on many reports from before the pandemic people used to say that Chase's travel portal was once far better than it was after they switched to Expedia. Same sorts of complaints we see about AmexTravel.com: phone agents who aren't well-trained and can't handle changes or cancellations, weird problems with reservations that took hours to resolve over the phone, etc. There were already posts about how much better Chase's travel portal used to be in the cxLoyalty days. It's no wonder to me that Chase finally gave up on Expedia and decided not only to go back to cxLoyalty but to actually BUY cxLoyalty.

As for Hopper, it's early days there too but I have to say their app is amazing, but I admit I've never had to try to deal with Hopper customer service if something goes wrong. However, their tech is very, very good.

mia

PTS's role has been diminished. The shift to allow online prepaid FHR bookings through Amex Travel seemed decisive to me, and the removal of prominent references to PTS from American Express marketing materials reinforces my sense that the decision has been made. This said, the Concierge feature has lingered well past the point I expected, so we might have some version of PTS for a long while,

nomiiiii

Reading about this PTS is interesting because I suppose all my painful interactions have inadvertantly been with the expedia/amextravel reps.

So I fully understand this benefit, if I make a flight or hotel booking on amextravel.com (which I honestly prefer, to do everything online as much as possible), and there is some issue like schedule change etc I need to call my Platinum travel folks for, if I say "travel" it will connect me to the more experienced PTS people who can work on my amextravel.com booking? Or if I used the online portal I'm stuck with their inferior agents for any manual handling?

mia

Correct. If you book through Amex Travel PTS cannot help you.

Kacee

There were multiple threads about Amex Travel/Expedia "nightmares" well before the pandemic. I personally contributed one of those stories following an absolutely terrible experience making an illness-driven change to a CX ticket that was completely bungled by Expedia and which Amex was unable either to explain or fix.

Having used Expedia a handful of times over the years (including showing up at HHV once and being told Expedia had not transmitted my reservation to them on a night they were sold out) I feel pretty comfortable saying that Expedia in general provides sub-par service and that I view Amex's increasing reliance on Expedia as a mistake if it wishes to maintain its image as a premium brand.

Maine2LA

To jump in and join the ranks of the confused: would someone kindly explain to me what that means exactly? Because almost every reservation I've ever made has been done online (whether using AmexTravel or direct with the carrier/property), and I've always received any applicable Platinum Card travel benefits (5x points where appropriate, annual travel credits, etc.).

I'd be grateful!

kthomas

Wondering if it is possible to book Economy Light international fares on DL/KL/AF via AmEx travel? They do not seem to come up in the (rather rudimentary) search results.

(Calling in once got someone who couldn't find the full economy fare that was in front of me online). (TBF, the fare does not show up unless one restricts the search to DL/KL/AF). TIA.

kthomas

If this was possible, neither I nor the second agent I spoke to could figure it out. AmEx's rate for standard economy was about 10% lower than the published fare and not significantly higher (<$100pp) than the econ light fare in this case-- as STE+, the fares are indistinguishable for me when flying AF/KL.

I did look at other routings where the difference would be significant (several hundred dollars per person), disappointing that AmEx's system does not seem to support light fares.

mia

Amex Travel is operated by Expedia. Does Expedia have the Light fares?

kthomas

That's a great question. I was not able to pull up any between my city pairs, but other routes have the economy light / main cabin distinction. Those do not seem available via AmEx travel-- currently I checked KBP<->ORD Dec 3rd to March 13th.

On that route, Econ light shows up on Expedia and is about $185/pp less than the AmEx fare-- the AmEx fare is about $15 more than Expedia FWIW. Maybe an AmEx agent could access the light fare on that route-- unknown.

Kacee

I was just offered an LX Light fare on Expedia.