LAXRuss

The absolute mother load that I hit with AMEX Concierge for many years in a row with a US Plat was buying tickets at face value for prime seating to the Wagner Bayreuth Opera Festival in Germany. AMEX in the 1950's evidently started buying blocks of tickets before the Festival became popular among classical enthusiasts and the Festival took care of AMEX and their international cardholders. It was wonderful obtaining prime seats year-after-year that many others spent a decade on a waiting list to purchase at face value. It was also fantastic to run into many other AMEX opera enthusiasts in the same section, often year after year-- what a great opportunity to meet people from South Africa, South America, the US, Europe and Asia, all who had the same love of opera. I still maintain contact with some of these now friends! Recently when the Wagner Festival changed management, they dumped the AMEX relationship and that was the end of my visits. It is still a popular event and they probably do not miss my annual trips. But then again, the new productions are not necessarily ones that I would want to frequent. I'm not bitter and I hope they continue to do well. I just felt when I attended the AMEX ticket block that I not only was benefitting from an ultra exclusive opportunity, but that I also ran into other cardholders who were true lovers of Wagner operas and not simply attending for the cachet of the event. In any case, these wonderful opportunities are the main reason I have maintained my multiple AMEX card memberships for many years and now choose to pay for the annual Cent membership fees. Yes, Cent still takes care of me when I travel and I have some stories, but nothing for my pleasure can compare to the opera tickets that AMEX obtained for so many years... AMEX Germany even had one wonderful employee who lovingly spent weekends in her free time working over the list of cardmembers registered for the opera performances and assigning the seating assignments within the ticket block as one would consider for a State dinner... In that sense, I always knew the people sitting next to me would have something in common... you just don't receive that level of personalized service other than at the highest levels of society and government.

gooselee

Stumbled across this reddit AMA with a guy who claims to have been a Plat/Cent concierge. I've only skimmed, but interesting reading...

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comment...press_platinum

mgarrett96

Just wanted to drop in my recent experiences... I've been a Plat Cardmember for 3 years now, and I've noticed their service has gotten better with time. They've taken care of getting multiple last minute reservations for me. One night I was in Philly with my parents... long story short, at 3pm on a Friday, we have the bright idea of trying to go to Barclay Prime for dinner. I tried calling the restaurant directly and was told there was no availably, so I sent Plat. concierge a text at 3pm and told them what I needed. They were able to secure a table for three at 7:30, just as I requested. They even were able to seat me in the main dining room per my request.

Then, the other day, I decided I was going to order lunch ahead and pick it up. I had a 9:45 meeting until lunch, and the restaurant didn't open to take orders until 10. I fired off a quick text to Amex and told them my order and what time I'd like to pick it up, and they called it in at 10 just as they opened. They sent me an email confirmation and everything went flawlessly. Later that day when I texted in for another request, she asked me how my lunch was and wanted to make sure that everything turned out perfect.

Maybe I'm easy to impress, but it really is the little things that make the difference here. There's lots of uses for the service, and they've helped me out of multiple predicaments. Thanks Amex!

USCTrojan83

I've noticed they really excel at restaurant reservations and sending flowers. Just about everything else is haphazard and mediocre.

Finding a boat to charter for an afternoon was problematic as they only sent me one option stating everything else was full, while I found three on my own.

My watch that I bought on the card was broken and Macy's never gave me a proof of purchase. The original receipt had been lost months ago, so I called Platinum Concierge to see if they could try to reach out to the store on my behalf and work on figuring out the process for getting a duplicate receipt. As my efforts to call Macy's were met with long holds and voicemails. After being placed on hold by AMEX, they flat out refused to do it, for no apparent reason.

gooselee

Perhaps slightly OT, but wouldn't the watch have been covered by purchase protection and the transaction accessible to Amex card service (vs. concierge) directly if purchased on your card?

fliesdelta

How do you sign up for this texting option?

mgarrett96

I'm honestly not sure how I signed up... According to an email they sent out a while ago, (here), you just have to be registered for concierge text alerts and then use the same phone to text them.

mia

See also:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...-via-sms.html?

AJCU

I have had this card 4 days, and am in love partially because of the concierge.

We ordered a screen off of Ebay from a company in China. The description, in broken English said that it would come with tutorials to show how to code and customize the screen. (We ordered it from here because we are engineering students who need this for a project and they had the best price). The screen came with no tutorials. We could not find anything on the internet, nor from the original manufacturer, and we really did look hard! The original manufacturer is also in China, and had NO contact information on their website, no email or phone. On Ebay there was virtually no way to contact either except through message (which still has not been responded to). With a deadline of Monday, I thought I would call AMEX to see what they could do to get me to tutorial guide and practice code. They came back in 36 hours with an email that has 5 mb worth of data and presentations from the manufacturer. This blew me away since we could not find a single thing. So, in a sense, they saved our engineering project from losing a critical piece!

Pseudo Nim

That's actually completely off the wall random, and totally awesome. I would have never expected them to be able to do something like that - but on the flip side, I do wonder whether they look at incoming requests and go "oh great another 50 restaurants ... here, make the new guy do it. hey what's this?"

AJCU

That is probably exactly what happens, although they did have someone "in the back" do the research, not the person I originally talked to on the phone. Regardless, I am impressed, and might have to try and keep them on their toes whenever I can!

dhuey

Just one data point, but it's a bad one. I'll be passing through Paris for only one night in June. A ballet performance on that day is sold out. I called Concierge; agent said she'll talk to brokers they use. Next day she tells me the brokers tell her ballet is sold out (uh, thanks). She can't find tickets.

So I spend about 20 minutes searching on my own, and I find a broker with tixs. Not cheap, but it's done. I don't understand why Concierge couldn't figure this out.

Still, I'm generally very happy with my AmEx Plat.

frqflyer77

Amex has special relationships with fine dining restaurants - where they reserve tables for centurion card holders. Some concierge specialists have used their pull to get this tables for platinum card holders. You can request it by asking nicely for them "to do everything they can" to get the table.

brunes

My only experience with the concierge thus far was in Las Vegas, we were there and decided to go to a Cirque show one night last minute. A quick Google on my phone showed me what tickets were available when and I had them all ready to purchase in a matter of minutes - but then I decided to test this program, which I never have used to date, to see what the concierge would offer me. So I called them up, and after waiting around for a few minutes on hold, I then spent another 2-3 minutes describing what I wanted, and then proceeded to wait while the guy looked up prices on the internet - he even told me he was doing this. Essentially he was doing what I had already done myself, except in a much slower fashion. Needless to say, I quickly told him that we changed our mind and got off of that call - what a waste of 15 minutes of my day.

My conclusion at this point in time is that in the days of the internet the concierge is just a giant waste of time if you are in any kind of a modern OECD country. They may have some value when you are in the backwoods areas where there is not all the information online, but those places are disappearing quickly. I have no interest in talking though something on the phone and having it take 10x as long as if I had done it myself with my smartphone.

brunes

Wow if this is a real feature they should advertise it. If I could text or email the concierge service, maybe I would use it more. I have no time to sit on the phone.