SteveT

What did the spend consist of? Business, personal, or a mix?

There have been a few folks whose annual spend is much less and live in a "rich" zip code that received an invite. JustA Millennial posted a video detailing his spend and it was much less than yours.

qnxr01

Quite a bit of travel. To Miami, Vegas, Hawaii. Don't fly private, but fly first class with the family -- which is usually nearly $10k per flight.

My wife, who is an additional card holder, actually spends quite a bit of money on Rodeo Drive.

Recently bought new living room furniture that went in the card. That was about $70k.

I guess you could easily categorize the bulk of our spending as "luxury and travel".

And put it this way: I have 4,732,006 MR points on my Amex at this point. So I've *used* this card.

WasKnown

How do they determine which region you’re from? Billing address?

This is my biggest question with the supposed geographic spend requirements. Surely many high spenders have pied a terres, beach homes, or even just travel to other places frequently. So what determines my geographic region? My primary residence is in NYC but my billing address is in an entirely different state. In terms of dollar amount spent, most of my spend is in Florida. So what region would I be in? Changing a billing address to a different state is trivial.

If it’s truly by zip code, I can understand the discrepancy. The range for the NYC metro area is pretty huge (same with LA).

qnxr01

Al I know is when I call Amex and I'm presenting with a 90 minute hold time, when I've spent literally $1 million on the card in the past 10 months, I'm dumbfounded. They make ~3% on every transaction, slightly lower for in-person payments, and slightly higher for e-commerce transactions. But it's about 3%. Which means, they've made about $30,000 of revenue off me this year, over and above my yearly fee. And I'm treated like an airline customer without status during a snowstorm on Thanksgiving week. Except every day. Do they really think I care so much about being associated with their brand that I'm going to get worse service from their concierge than you can get on a Visa Infinite card from a bunch of other competitors? They clearly do. I literally only have this card for theoretical convenience. A $200 credit here or a $75 credit there is just not as valuable to me as my time. And time is something they don't seem to have for me, despite being the kind of customer they're making $30,000+ revenue/year off me.

I really feel like they're calling it in and taking their best customers for granted. I called in with these frustrations, got transferred over to retentions and I basically expressed frustration about the hold times, which she apologized for. I told her that I was interested in the Centurion product for the above reasons, and she told me that she couldn't help me with that. She put me on hold for a bit -- ostensibly to go to talk to a manager or something -- and came back and actually advised me to cancel my Platinum card if it was between that and demanding a Centurion invite, suggesting Amex would rather not have me as a customer if it's between me demanding a Centurion invite and cancelling my card. They insisted that program was invite-only and they weren't going to compromise the program. Basically, I was told to F-off.

mia

This is an excellent illustration of how American Express makes money with the Centurion card carrot. Why haven't you closed your American Express accounts, and moved your business to a concierge service that is a better match for your requirements? There isn't any real reason to use a concierge service that's bundled with a credit card. Find one that is responsive, capable, and pay for it.

,

qnxr01

Yeah. To be clear: this is the route I'm going. Been doing a trial with a concierge service the past little bit and been looking into these options. Just relaying my experience trying to angle for Centurion invite, despite being a long term, high spending member, and the surprising ways in which Amex is surprisingly letting me fall through the cracks, despite being a high value customer.

But I've emotionally moved on from expecting the invite. Maybe I've been disqualified for one of their "secret sauce" reasons in their mysterious invite formula.

hhdl

Part of the value in having a Centurion card is that it's something most people in any given spot don't see that often. From this, it follows that the proverbial low-mid-six-figure spender doesn't hurt the value of Centurion for an Angeleno who spends $5m a year, but an Angeleno who spends $1m a year would damage the value of Centurion for that $5m/yr member.

Idle thought: given that arguably Amex's real customers are the merchants (and Amex's pitch is, "our members spend more"), there might be a case for favoring members based on the number of merchants at which you're a top spender (thereby keeping the merchant from dropping Amex).

moe8555

After seeing these posts, I really think we have no idea what the algorithm is - or if there even is one (besides generally above-average spend).

We've seen people that have received invites with only 5-digit spend, yet others with 7-digit spend with no offer.

The only guaranteed way would be via private bank relationship for the ICC version, I suppose.

qnxr01 Have you called the Centurion hotline and spoken to someone? The phone menu literally allows you to "press 1" to express interest and be transferred to a real person.

qnxr01

I definitely think geography plays a role. It must. I've been an extremely high spending Amex customer for years, who has explicitly expressed interest and been ignored and turned away. And I've been a Platinum member for a decade.

GUWonder

It would take a tremendous leap of faith to think that geography doesn't play a role in what the qualification arrangements are for getting access to becoming a Centurion Card member.

In very recent times, there are some UK Amex cardholders who got invites to Centurion with way less than even $200k in annual spend on Amex cards.

There are Swedish Amex cardholders who got invites to Centurion with less than $150k in annual spend on Amex cards.

There are US Upper Midwest cardholders who got invites to Centurion with around $800k-$1.5M in annual spend on Amex cards while their same relatives around NY/NJ/CT doing the same or even way more annual spend on Amex cards did not.

Geographic consideration, spending volume, but also spending nature -- as in how much spent at specific merchant/submerchant types -- probably come ups in the consideration process for sending invites. The determinations about invitations seem to be also under the influence of Amex's area management figures.

NotSoMuch

As someone who received an invite after the equivalent of $150k of spend in the UK, I can confirm this is very much the case.

I have a call with my membership executive on Thursday and plan to ask him about the invite criteria. Will update here as well as over in the UK dedicated thread

EWRFlyerNJ

This type of thing keeps being said over and over and over again "......while their same relatives around NY/NJ/CT doing the same or even way more annual spend on Amex cards did not."

I averaged 650k over past three years (prior 5 years average was around 200k) and I live in northern NJ, totally a NYC commuter town with wealthy people and high home prices. And I got the invite in JULY 2021. So, there is clearly something much more to it than spend because I think we are misleading people by focusing entirely on spend. I have no earthly idea what else it might be, but you certainly do not need to charge millions a year on Hermes/Rolex/Ferrari to get it (I didn't!).

stimpy

More important than geographical issues is timing. Amex can change the bar anytime they want. And they clearly do. Us old-timers can tell you that when Centurion was launched in the US, the bar was $250K per year spend on your personal Platinum card. No matter what your zip code was.

GUWonder

I can't say much of anything about what happened in the US market with Centurion invites in the second half of this year. But in some parts of Europe, the invites seem to have gone out for those with lower spend levels than in prior years. My guess is that: Amex wants the Centurion membership fee revenue even more right now and has adjusted its "requirements" for who gets invitations; and the "requirements" been changing across its markets, domestic and international, where they offer a Centurion product. While the Centurion cards for accounts based outside of the US are a different mix of costs and benefits than in the US, usually best practices do make their way around and get used at least in part elsewhere -- and that means that changes that are noted outside of the US may be a reflection of what has also happened in the home (US) market with Centurion invites in 2021.

Visconti

I have no idea idea either, but if I were running an outfit similar to Amex, here's what I'd probably consider:

1. Quality of charges - Discretionary income on luxury items are more valuable than business charges on inventory that falls under cost of goods sold. Leverage to charge higher merchant fees are driven mostly by the promise of delivering high quality big spenders. There's a world of difference between charging, say, $500K in post tax luxury travel related goods than $5 Million worth of vendor inventory in a low gross margin business.

2. Zip code - Especially in today's big data actionable world, it's not difficult to get an idea of a person's net worth, and where one lives is a good start. For instance, anyone who lives in a zip with high home prices with no or low mortgage will excellent collateral, and will likely have a higher real avg income than what's often on the current year's AGI line the tax form.

3. Profession - Certain professions exclude those with bad credit, history of having filing bankruptcy and exhaustive background checks. Those in these professions in combination of the above bear very little reputational risks--they generally always pay their bills and never run afoul of laws, especially financial ones.

4. Prior history - Amex with their closed loop system will mean they have the most granular data at their disposal and combined with a cardmember's history should allow them to, more or less, devise the secret sauce on how best to maximize revenue and enhance the "mythical appeal" that has always been associated with this card.

5. Assets known to them - Some individuals and businesses, for whatever reason, require limits higher than Amex would be comfortable, and have submitted documentation buttressing the case for higher charge capacity. In this cases, Amex has intimate understanding of assets, and may thus make decisions accordingly.

I'm sure there's much more, but those seem pretty common sense and easy enough to implement in a model.