I have always wondered if platinum concierge offered by Banks and Credit card would worth at all. This is the first of multiple posts on this topics.
When planning a trip to Japan, I wanted to purchase some items from a local shop there. Unfortunately, the contact person from the shop does not speak English and unable to reply my request even by Email. I called American Express Platinum Concierge and relayed my request for the staff there to translate and contact the shop’s person. Although I received professional service, I found myself waiting 1-2 days per each way of communication.
Amex seems to engage a service provider to translate my request into Japanese and contact the shop by phone. In a week, I managed to get 2 times end-to-end conversation through the concierge. Apparently, Amex doesn’t seems to have a Japanese speaking staff in their team. Amex call centre is based in Malaysia for Singapore customer.
Tired with the delay, I contacted Visa Infinte Concierge. As I suspected, they have multi-lingual staff in their call centre. I managed to get a reply from the concierge in a matter of 2-3 hours after they contacted the shop. Their call centre is based in Australia. There are multiple phone number that you can call, each indicating the languages that you speak e.g. English, Bahasa Indonesia, Malay, Chinese, Japanese.
This experience also confirms my reluctantness in using Amex concierge and reaffirms Visa concierge’s credibility.
Note: American express platinum concierge (Credit Card) only provide limited service e.g. restaurant, golf bookings, while it provides wider services for charge card customer. For this request, I’m comparing the concierge for Charge Card from Amex with VICC. Visa also has its own call centre for platinum card customer, which I believe will do the same.
Practical advise:
- Despite all the mention of concierge services, don’t expect a replacement for yourself and a good personal assistant. You’d have to direct the concierge on your request, provide them with as many details as possible and follows-up with them.
- Familiarize yourself with what kind of services avaiable from your banks/credit card companies
- You may ask for staff who speak your language, if you prefer to speak in other languange than English.
- Try other concierge on your request if you find the quality of service you’re getting is not up to your satisfaction.
Tags: American Express, Amex, Concierge, Infinite, Visa
Thursday, 17 July 2008 at 4:57 |
Hi,
1. I worked for Amex Concierge for roughly about 1 year. Amex actually only has 2 concierge offices. 1 in Burlington, Ontario Canada and 1 in Boston, MA. I will tell you as well, that the hiring staff and Management in both concierge offices are extremely bad. I won’t say the company Amex outsources to. I will respect there policy even though i’m sure plenty of people know since it says it at the bottom of all the concierge emails!!! LOL.
2. The employees are treated like dirt. Nobody has 2 consecutive days off and upon hiring you are given your hours after 5 weeks of training so you might be stuck with an overnight shift. Great!.. you couldn’t tell me this before wasting my time!
Let me tell you. Concierge is nothing more than doing what we can all do but JUST PLAIN DOING IT FOR US. They use Ticketmaster, Playbill, Frommers for recommendations, Open table to resturant reservations and best of all… That hard to find item you were looking for…. GOOGLE… YES… GOOGLE… NOTHING MORE THAN WHAT WE CAN DO. Sold out tickets you say??? TICKET BROKER. But you called the resturant and they were fully booked? Nooooo way they got you in??? Did you forget to mention you are a platinum card holder and AMEX has arrangements with certain resturants to hold seats for there card holders. (*cough*). Ticketmaster has a code to get presales… only concierge can do that… NOOOOOOOO… read the fine print… the code is the customer service number located on the back of your Amex card LOL!!!! or just type Amex… oh and guess what… they google pre-sale codes. You can do that can’t you?
3. Staff diversity???? hmmmm… didn’t see too much of that there. I mean we had a token spanish guy lol…. Maybe thats why it was hard to get reservations in France or Italy!!!
4. Think about this for a minute. You just spent 20 minutes on hold then waiting for someone else to search TICKETMASTER for show tickets. They tell you, “I’m sorry, that show is currently sold out, can I find an alternative show for you?”…. 20 MINUTES PRIOR THERE WERE PROBABLY 100 TICKETS LEFT!!!!
5. Amex needs to keep that type of service on-site. Outsourcing call centers when it comes to something so sensitive (Centurion Concierge is in the same building). I won’t put AMEX in hot water, but company “A” that they hired does not havegood security management at all. Credit card numbers have left that building just as much as fired employees have. Need I say more?
Tuesday, 12 August 2008 at 20:43 |
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
Friday, 24 October 2008 at 6:03 |
Hi Ex Amex Concierge Rep:
I really believe it was shady for you to publicize all of Amex’s business like that. Okay, there are people out there who don’t really care how they get the reservation… We simply do not have the time to scour the internet and find seats / tables.
Also, your message gives me the impression that you didn’t get the shift you wanted and they fired you for some reason (probably for being mouthy). This gives you no right to disclose their information in this way.
Thursday, 12 March 2009 at 15:27 |
So just what information was the ex-AmEx concierge rep giving out? Staff home phone numbers? Addresses? Nope, didn’t see any of those…he didn’t even give out the name of the subcontractor. Frankly, I appreciated the information. All these companies want to offer all these “benefits”, but yet want to farm them out to bottom-feeder subcontractors for whatever they are willing to do it for and their customers have to deal with it. This particular company’s way of doing business explains why our host had such poor results.
As a VISA cardholder who noticed that his card had the VISA Concierge Service as a benefit, I wondered how this service differed from simply going online and doing it yourself. As the first commenter stated, it doesn’t. Plus, I would expect that there is some incentive for the representatives of the subcontractor to steer someone towards particular products because of commissions or other rewards.
So, yeah, this type of service only works if somehow you are unable to do for yourself. Not quite the at-your-beck-and-call impression that they would like you to think the service is.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009 at 9:28 |
I would most of the time do-it-myself. However, there are times where you’d need someone to do it for you. Language issues, or when you’re in overseas.
I was recently in Bangkok and would need to reserve a restaurant table at Vertigo, Banyan Tree Hotel. I called Visa Infinite local number and within 15 minutes, it’s done. I don’t bother calling American Express at that point.
Concierge service costs money to banks, and banks got the cost covered by our transactions and membership fees. How the concierge motivates their employees, it’s their issue but it has to be done. It’s not a free service IMHO.
Friday, 15 May 2009 at 7:29 |
I found this very interesting, but I must say that Visa Infinite Concierge is not located in Australia, it is located in the United States. I know this because I work there. From the post and several comments (which I passed on to my colleagues) it would appear that we’re doing a pretty good job.