qnxr01

I have a friend who is actually a near-billionaire on paper, who is a co-founder of a tech startup. Lives in Beverly Hills. I got into a conversation with him about this too. He checked his YTD spend on his Platinum, and he's actually spent $3.7 million YTD. Last year, his spend was $2.1 million on the card. He indicated interest in Centurion earlier this year, too. He's also not received an invite. This adds a bit more evidence to what my colleague who is former Amex told me that they want to "keep it exclusive within the community in which you live". He lives in a community filled with billionaires, and he can't get an invite either. Which adds credence to the idea the bar they set for you is highly affected by your zip code. If you live in a community of multi-millionaires, you probably need to a billionaire to get a Centurion invite. If you live in the mid-west, making $750k/year probably puts you in the top 0.1% and that's why people there at that level get Centurion invites. I think there's definitely an element of maintaining bragging rights within your community, and that seems to explain these discrepancies. I also have a friend who just got one without ever having been an Amex member just because he switched over to Goldman Sachs for personal wealth management -- the Centurion is an automatic perk if you have have sufficient AUM at Goldman.

It's pretty obvious here that Centurion is not at all meant to be a profit-maximizing program for Amex. It's a marketing tool to fuel prestige of the entire brand. Hence, the fact they're turning away ultra rich people in rich communities and limiting it only to the most rich people within those communities.

I definitely think spend is a factor in qualifying you. But it's a sliding scale based on the community you live in. There's no absolute universal bar. If you live in Trousdale Estates in Beverly Hills, you may need to spend $10 million/year to get an invite -- because I'm pretty sure they don't like the idea of every single person in Trousdale Estates pulling out their Centurion card. It would make it feel less exclusive to those people, if all their friends and neighbors had it. This is, to me, a pretty clear facet of how they've designed the invite formula. If you live in Bakersfield, CA, spending $300k/year might get you a fancy little black box with an invitation inside. I'm like 95% confident this is part of the formula.

moe8555

That does make sense. I think overall longevity as an Amex cardholder also plays a role (especially for fringe cases, like the tie breaker for that upgrade on Delta if you have the Reserve).

Both here and in other communities, I've seen reports of longtime members getting invites with lower spend, sometimes just upper 5 digits.

qnxr01

Realizing this is the case, I'm probably actually just going to close my Amex Platinum account and give them the middle finger, so to speak. May just move my primary spend over the Chase. Because even though Chase doesn't have the reputation associated with people at my income level, I have to say, their customer service for their high-spending clients is just way better than what Amex has today. Platinum support and concierge is just complete garbage and no longer worth my time. Because the card actually does nothing for me. Was really only interested in Centurion Concierge, and I'm moving in the direction of trying other options. Doing a trial with Velocity Black, and actually been quite impressed with it.

It's pretty sad, because this didn't use to be true. I once had my wallet stolen in India, and was stranded without access to funds -- this was probably in 2013 or so, and Amex literally got me a replacement card, flown in from Singapore over night and delivered by courier to me in less than 24 hours, and they helped arrange getting me some cash that day. It was crazy white glove service for Platinum back then. Now, it has customer service that could at best be described as average and not even as good as its competitors in the premium card space. Now I'm just gum on the bottom of their shoe, with no sense of appreciation for the loyalty I've given them, with very high customer LTV.

Also, a Chase Visa has lower interchange rates for retailers and I can also feel a bit better saving the businesses I transact with a little money, rather than presenting an Amex which has taken its best customers for granted. Chase also seems very hungry to attract Platinum members away these days with their high end cards. The effort shows.

To be clear: I'm not miffed I can't get a Centurion invite per se. I don't care about the bragging rights. My desire to get one has been largely driven by the fact I just want better service and access to their concierge service. As they've let these aspects of the Platinum program decay, it intensified my desire to get a Centurion invite. I have a really crazy life and I'm a bit of a convenience whore. I am willing to spend a lot of money just to buy back some time and convenience. But it seems that I just don't tick the box for Amex or whatever it is, and so I think it's just not a good fit to be associated with this brand anymore.

WasKnown

Just saying, the concierge with the JPM Reserve is nothing special. It is affiliated with their private banking product (which theoretically should provide non-traditional services like family planning) but JPM PB is also pretty uncompetitive.

There are rumors about a new high AF Bank of America card and possible new Preferred Reward tiers for people that hold $1m+ and $10m+ respectively with BoA/ML. Personally, I find this to be very exciting given BoA's recent push to improve upon its client relationship management. I would keep an eye on that. Good luck.

WasKnown

Completely agree. I don’t understand the logic of people saying that Amex wants to focus on earning card fees from the Centurion with a wider net of acceptance. Amex 2019 top line for discount revenue was $26.1 billion and… for net card fees… $3.3 billion… The appeal of making Amex cards desirable to spend money on is worth far more than they could ever collect in card fees. Per Amex’s own 10k, it is also clearly more important to them as well. Even the above poster said chase credit cards are not typically associated with people in his/her income level. That association is the real value of the Centurion.

GUWonder

Area management (for a product) and/or product management has its own objectives and targets. Membership fee revenue has been a relevant part of that picture, and that's unlikely to have changed entirely -- especially not in an era when Amex has been on a relatively recent kick to ramp up the annual fees for its "premium" non-affinity card products.

I don't understand the logic of people who don't understand how companies operate and who don't appreciate that decisions also take place at the margins within companies.

WasKnown

Source? Because I am looking at something from Amex that says the opposite lol. I have asked you to source your claims multiple times on this site and have yet to receive one.

Nothing can take away from the empirical data that Amex is a company whose top line is entirely driven from discount revenue. Again looking at their 10K: more than 10s of billions of dollars vs. not even 5 billion. Net card fees are not irrelevant because a) Per Amex, they are more durable against recessions b) they naturally grow as the total cardholder count grows. However, there is nothing to suggest that Amex would ever care about net card fees against discount revenue when these two are in opposition with one another. Ie growing the centurion cardholder count to increase card fees but also hurting the brand equity of the “prestigious” black card that, per this thread (and as others have noted), drives high dollar spending on Amex.

But, don’t take my word for it. Read any of the reputable equity research covering Amex or even look at what Stephen Squeri has said himself: the future of Amex is shaped entirely by consumer spending.

HawkeyeFlyer

Well as of September 2020 there were 160 TOTAL Billionaires in CA. So regardless of what community he lives in, including Trousdale Estates, he would be in rare air if truly a billionaire.

qnxr01

I don't doubt he'll get an invite before I do!

SteveT

There could be several reasons for not yet getting an invite. Business vs personal spend, length of time he/she have been a cardmember, average spend since the time they became a cardmember, credit report details (not just score), etc. Just viewing the threads, you'll see that people have received invites with far less spend and they live in a "rich" zip code.

DP shows that your zip code isn't a factor.

All it takes is $10M (lol), but they don't waive the fees.

I don't think that's the case. It would be interesting to see the percentage of people that decline the invitation.

I definitely think spending is a major factor, but there is more that goes into it than we will ever realize.

synzero

This is interesting, because I am very very far from a Centurion member, just a run of the mill upper middle class tech guy, but I still find Platinum service relatively good. I'm curious when you've had these 90 minute wait times - I admit I don't call member services that often, but when I do I have gotten an immediate pickup to my call. As for the Concierge I don't use it that often, but I just tried it now (Monday 3pm Pacific time) and they said the wait time was less than 10 minutes, with a callback option.

In my experience with Chase, they are much less good on a number of fronts - especially when it comes to insurance. American Express return and purchase protection is great, they have always approved my very legitimate claims without any hassle, crediting the full value of the item to my account when I've lost or had an item stolen in the first 90 days, or when we ordered some pants online that were too big and the retailer wouldn't accept a return - Amex just refunded the money right back to our account. I've used them as recently as this year. Another example last year, we lost one of our cards while in South Korea and they expressed a replacement card right to the place we were staying - even in the middle of a pandemic when ordinary mail was taking forever and passenger flights had been drastically curtailed.

I don't use the concierge much, in the past mostly for restaurant reservations and recommendations, with great results, but I have heard rumors concierge is getting much less good. I'm curious to hear how that service has declined.

But I have both a Chase Sapphire Reserve AND a Platinum card - both personal and business. The lounge access with the Chase in the US is a joke - the Platinum card is vastly better, with access to Centurion and Delta SkyClub plus Escape lounges and others. I see zero reason to "cancel" the Platinum card - why not just have both, and use each for what it's good for? Chase is better for a lot of things but they are well known for being stingy with insurance claims and the Platinum has features like emergency medical evacuation which is MUCH better than Chase's. I use both and get a ton of benefit from each. I'm really curious what bad experiences you've had that are so bad you're thinking of cancelling the card entirely.

Bm86

I just saw this post and asked my Goldman Sachs Managing Director about this today. He said he isn’t sure about the Centurion, but can get me the co-branded Amex Platinum. I said I will take it, so we will see if it has any push to get me to the Centurion.

Bm86

Goldman Sachs contacted me back and said they actually can request me a centurion but it had to be approved by someone at Goldman. They approved and said they are sending me the invitation. Im still skeptical about it but we will see

SteveT

I think it's a given. They would tell you that there was no guarantee if that was the case.

moe8555

Any recent reports out there regarding ICC Centurion invitations by chance?