Amex Concierge UK - how do you use them?
 

Hi all,

I am wondering what people think of the Amex concierge service in the UK? Is it at all useful? I have never used it before but some people seem to think it's the best thing ever. It seems like the service only deals with travel and hotels plus event bookings at the O2 and the like.

I read all sorts of stories about people using it to help find purchases, organise parties etc, so phoned them up today about finding a gift and apparently they will do it - but a min spend is £1000 and they mostly deal with watches. Well that's helpful (not!)

Is this benefit just a smokescreen and not worth anything or am I using it wrong?


Many thanks,

M

It's completely useless. Centurion is ok, but even there it's stuff you could easily do yourself, possibly with better results.

Can't give any recent feedback, but I had the Platinum ICC card serviced out of the UK for a few years and found the concierge service in general quite OK, especially for restaurant reservations.

On one occasion I used them for securing a restaurant booking at one high end sushi restaurant in Tokyo and, despite it took them a couple of weeks to confirm, they managed to get it. I understood they had to liaise with their Japanese counterparts so that gave me a sense that they went "the extra mile" as opposed to the easy way.

However, I think that this really depends on who you speak to -- like everything in life. Some may care more, others not so much.

Thanks both, sounds like outside of booking restaurants and hotels (which, to be honest, sounds like I could do the same with TripAdvisor) there is very little point in this "service". I guess it would be simpler if they said it's travel and restaurant booking service.

I don't get why I read all these glowing reviews about it - I guess I'll just delete the number from my contacts and not bother with them!

Amex Platinum (personal UK) 'concierge'
 

Hi there everyone

Does anyone have any information to help me better understand the Amex Platinum (personal) UK concierge service?

I've been a Platinum UK member for about 10 years and I seem to remember a time when I could call the concierge, with a fairly esoteric or difficult request - and it would just get sorted - very quickly.

However, particularly recently, even fairly basic requests for restaurants / entertainment / gifts and general requests, have been handled in a fairly surly / belligerent fashion and haven't yielded any results that I couldn't have gotten through spending 10 minutes Googling. I know the world remains in a crazy place (and anyone is welcome to tell me I am expecting too much) but I seem to remember a better time, when I could make a quick call, speak to someone super helpful and my request was always actioned.

Now, I have to plead with someone to engage with my request or even address the request and after a few hours wait, no-one seems able to help.

Has anyone else noticed the concierge service nosedive?
Is it outsourced?
Am I expecting too much?

It genuinely has been so useful to me in the past, that given its nosedive and the unhelpful staff I've spoken to, I am really re-considering whether the card is right for me and my business.

I'd love some thoughts from others!

In my experience it has never been useful, and everything I have asked of the concierge service or my Centurion RM is something that I could easily have done better, and faster. I think it is a service that, like priority tags, makes people feel special but in practice achieves little.

I think, now, you are quite right.

The shame for me, is that I do seem to recall a 'better time', when I felt like the service actually added some significant value, but certainly over the past 18 months or so, not only has the scope of service seemingly closed, the general aptitude or desire to help, seems to have significantly diminished! I cannot seem to engage anyone to assist me or to add any 'Amex Magic' to my requests.

About 20 years ago I asked UK Platinum concierge to organise tickets to the Musikverein in Vienna that evening. It was a spontaneous trip and I was at the airport and just didn’t have the time. When I got to the hotel there was a voicemail message from Amex about how they had tried but really couldn’t get anything for me, they thought it was sold out but weren’t really sure because the website was in German and they didn’t really understand. But thank you for being a card member. I asked the concierge who 15 minutes later told me tickets were waiting for me to pick up at the entrance.

Last year I asked my Centurion RM to organise a private Rhein tour of several vineyards with our own boat, for about 8 people. A day later I received some links to local ferry companies. In fairness she is good in booking hotels and making sure the GM acts like the store manager in Pretty Woman, but it’s a service I don’t value a great deal.

Interesting - perhaps in the past I have just got lucky, with either the right person and / or the right request, at the right time!

Does anyone know if the concierge is outsourced (I sense the long-arm of Serco or similar in recent months!) or whether it is in-house - just out of interest?

When I spoke to Concierge service around the time of when I started this thread and queried this, they said to me that most of the non-travel stuff is outsourced, hence the £1k minimum spend.

I took it as the basic service is in house but the rest is outsourced. I think they mentioned that the provider changed about 3 years ago.

Reporting a bit of a strange experience today with Concierge. Previously have found them to be quite difficult to deal with but occasionally helpful with certain things. City guides for example have definitely been useful in the past.

I have been trying to track down some contact lenses for my wife who likes a particular brand but is unable to find them anymore in normal UK retailers. After a bit of searching online it seems like a few places have them but International shipping can be difficult, or they do clearly ship to the UK but are in and out of stock. Seems like a good job for the Concierge to look for someone who has them or can combine one box from one place and one from another depending on what diopter they have in stock.

I have previously dealt with UK concierge by email so emailed the address - a reply came back saying it's not possible to email requests anymore and to instead call up (I hate doing this) or use the app. App sounds good so I paste the request in there.

Reply comes back after 45 minutes to say that requests are no longer served by email which is why my request was rejected previously (I had figured this out from the email saying exactly this). In terms of the actual request, the agent said:

I find this absolutely amazing. I am not really sure if this is the actual policy or just an unhelpful agent -- if AmEx Concierge really won't help with such queries anymore, then it is surely not acceptable to describe the service as they do, and instead it should be pitched as more of a personal shopper who occasionally fires up Opentable...

Moderator action
 

I moved your post into the separate UK concierge thread.

Scroll back. It appears this is policy.

Apologies, didn't realise there was a UK thread.

Hearing this I am absolutely amazed; never encountered anything like a minimum spend before, and the attitude is appalling as well.

To be honest, I’m not sure what you were expecting. Amex Platinum is a mass-market product. It has certain uses but it does not come with a personal assistant to track down toiletries. I don’t mean to be snarky, but you can probably understand that there is no margin in fulfilling these requests. Even Centurion RM would find it odd to be asked to do this.

You have to know what they're good for - hotels (particularly FHR/Hotel Collection), restaurants (restaurant collection), flights (esp. deals e.g. upgrades, using BA GUF2, specific flexibility), Amex sponsored events (e.g. at O2 in the UK), and specific retail benefits as detailed in the benefits section. Stick to it and you'll be fine. Outside of that I agree its mostly easier to do it yourself or if you have a PA have them do it. Though I am commenting mostly on the Centurion RM side of things.