DirtyShirt

Plat Concierge was able to book a 7:00 pm reservation for Valentine's day at our favorite restaurant. I had called on my own earlier and was told there was no availablity for the entire night.

DirtyShirt

Double post.

PlatHunter

I agree very much with this. Even though I checked opentable within five minutes from receiving the email from amex. However isn't the point of concierge is that they have some sort of pull? That is why I tried them and simply didn't go to opentable in the first place.

dkelly1110

From what I have been told the concierge does have pull, but only at certain restaurants. These restaurants (ones that have good relations with Amex) hold one table per day specifically for Amex Concierge reqeusts. If that table has not been booked for the day you're trying to reserve, I would imagine they have a better chance fo snagging it for you. Couple of weeks ago I wanted to move my reservation at Barton G in Miami from a 9:30 to something a bit earlier, the concierge contacted the restaurant on my behalf, but was unable to get anything in the 8:00 hour. Such is life. The restaurant was *packed* though, even as we were leaving close to 11:30.

And why not try opentable first yourself, it's pretty easy to check one restaurant on one day...

PlatHunter

Amex is suppose to have a good relationship with tao it is in the fine dining program. I guess I should of checked opentable first but isn't this the purpose of a concierge service?? Maybe I don't understand what a concierge service is for I thought securing restaurant reservation would be one of them. If a free website can secure this shouldn't amex with thier relationship be able to do the same?

Anyways that has been my experiance with AMEX conceirge I hope you have better luck.

sbm12

I'm in the middle of a ~3 week long effort to have them help me obtain tickets for a soccer/football match in Hong Kong for next Sunday (10 Feb). I first tried the web site of the stadium and they didn't seem to have a means for buying the tickets online (nor a seat map). Some additional searches yielding nothing so I went to AmEx. After ~10 days of "time zone issues" and "language issues" I finally got a call back a midnight one night that went to voicemail telling me that the stadium doesn't take AmEx but I could have the concierge from my hotel arrange it. ...?? I thought using them as my "agent" was supposed to mitigate the language, time and other barriers.

I've had them make reservations at (and even recommend) restaurants that don't take AmEx, so that shouldn't be an issue, though they would need a different card number from me to process the sale. Since I was planning on staying VERY low budget in HKG the hotel concierge option wasn't particularly a good one. I've since decided to spend a couple days at the Renaissance Kowloon, which has a concierge I can use and I have the AmEx folks working that angle now, so hopefully it'll go through OK, but it is definitely more effort than I think it should've been. And it still isn't done

soitgoes

Are you talking about the Lunar New Year Cup?

I can't see a way to buy them online, but I did find the ticket prices and the seat map.
http://www.lcsd.gov.hk/stadium/hks/en/news.php
http://www.hkfa.com/en/load_page.php?pid=12
http://www.hkfa.com/includes_files/b...p?news_id=5548
http://www.hkfa.com/en/load_page.php?pid=125

JumboD

Anyone have good luck with them for LA nightclub guestlist (not bottle service) reservations, and then have the club honor that list (even when the guy/girl ratio isn't favorable)? I've thought of trying this, it's been alright in NYC, haven't tried it here. They've been pretty good on restaurant reservations, but since getting the card haven't had occasion to use it for club guestlists. Also, which clubs have you had good luck with?

sbm12

Yeah. They also found the PDF of the seat maps and sent it to me. They also have now tolkd me that they are not going to facilitate the transaction for me because it is not going to be charged to my AmEx card

I'm hoping to get a better answer when I talk to them in person tomorrow.

S.

sartech

I had an less than successful request last week as well.

Since I was only flying home early Friday morning, I didn't have time to start asking around for new restaurant ideas for the weekend.

I called them up and asked them the following:
1) restaurant & show suggestion in Tel Aviv
2) no seafood
3) send the response to my company email address

What I received was:
1) restaurant & show suggestion in Toronto
2) seafood specialty
3) sent to my gmail account

I know that the agent to who took the call knew exactly what I asked, as he repeated certain parts back to me in the course of the conversation. The email address was spelled out very carefully.

The problem occurred in the hand-off between the rep I spoke with and the one who was given the request to handle.

soitgoes

That's frustrating. It's not your fault you can't use an Amex to pay for the tickets.

sbm12

It didn't go any better when I talked to them in person. The woman basically stated that any goods/services, other than a restaurant reservation, MUST be paid for with an AmEx. Anything else was, in her words, a "conflict of interest" which is pretty ridiculous. If they are going to advertise it as a concierge service then it should be one. Otherwise they need to advertise it as a service that will help you charge things to your AmEx card. I know that is what they want us to do, and I almost always do use my AmEx when I have them make a call for me. This is a particularly biting on AmEx's part.

In the specific case of my wanting these tickets apparently they could only be purchased at the box office of the stadium. My hotel offered to send a porter over to complete the transaction for me for a HK$100 (~US$12) fee but I ended up going to Macau instead of the game.

boulderlaw

Kevin Taylor in Denver had no availability on OpenTable for restaurant week. Concierge got us a table for 4 on Saturday night at 9:45. Late, but better than never.

winPCH

I needed a 7 PM reservation on Valentine's Day but OpenTable only had 6 PM available at the restaurant I wanted. Concierge was able to book the 7 PM table.

dkelly1110

Way to wait until the last minute.

Thank goodness for the concierge...