1st Ever FFU Alert / AMEX Platinum Concierge Experience

1st FFU Text Alert

This past weekend, I sent out the first ever FFU alert!

If you signed up for text alerts last week, then Sunday you should have received the following messages on your phone!

If you signed up for FFU Alerts but didn’t receive the above messages on your phone, then you may not have enabled mobile notifications.

Anyways, just wanted to make sure everyone who signed up for FFU Alerts, actually received them.

The deal which Just Another Points Traveler found is actually fairly spectacular! A normal U.S – London award ticket would cost you around 30,000 Miles each way on United or American. Instead with Virgin Atlantic, it is only 13,000 – 17,500 Virgin Miles each way with NO FUEL SURCHARGES, which is really a steal!

My AMEX Platinum Concierge Experience

While most of us only get credit cards for the miles, almost all cards come with a host of “perks”.

Some of the perks include priority boarding, lounge access, increased earning ratios, concierge service, etc.

Outside of lounge access from my AMEX Platinum, I don’t really use any of the additional “perks” that come with any of my 21+ credit cards.

That being said, a couple weeks ago I did actually use the AMEX Platinum Concierge Service and was so impressed that I decided it deserved a write up.

While I have known about the AMEX Platinum Concierge Service since way back in January, when one of my friends used the service to have clothes picked out and concerts tickets delivered, I have only used the service once.

This was when another friend left her coat in the Istanbul Airport. I thought it was a stretch but didn’t have any better ideas so I called AMEX Concierge and asked them to see if they could find the coat and send it back to the US. To my surprise, they called Istanbul Airport, Lufthansa, and Madrid Airport everyday for 2 weeks trying to find the coat. Unfortunately the coat was never found but I was still impressed with their effort in trying to find it.

Since then I haven’t used the AMEX Platinum Concierge Service because many times it is far quicker for me to perform the task (like making dinner reservations) rather then calling it in to AMEX and explaining the task to an agent.

However 2 weeks ago, I decided to put AMEX Platinum Concierge Service to the test after I forgot to make dinner reservations for an important dinner.

In typical male fashion, I remembered the morning of the dinner that I had forgot to make reservations. After a quick Yelp session, I decided to see if I could get a reservation to restaurant called RPM Italian, which is owned by Bill and Giuliana Rancic

I called up the restaurant and although it was a weekday, to my surprise the restaurant didn’t have any reservations available until 10PM!

10PM was way too late, so I decided to try the AMEX Platinum Concierge Service and see what they could do. I honestly wasn’t expecting much. At best maybe I thought they could get us a spot at 9PM?

I called the number on the back of my AMEX Platinum and explained where I wanted to go, the time, party size, etc.

The agent was very friendly and asked if this was a special occasion and should they inform the restaurant if it was. The agent also asked if it was needed, could the restaurant secure my reservation with a credit card. Since I knew we were for sure going to be there, I said it was okay, although in the end it wasn’t needed.

The agent said she would give the restaurant a call and call me back in a few minutes.

5 minutes later, the agent called me back and said she had secured us a spot at 7PM!

I was fairly amazed that she was able to snag us a prime time reservation. I have no idea what the agents say but I am guessing sometime during the conversation the words “AMEX Platinum Cardholder” are dropped.

When we arrived at RPM later that evening, we went ahead and checked in with the hostess.

RPM is definitely one of those restaurants where even if you have a reservation and check in on time, they still make you wait 15 minutes and kindly direct you to spend money at the bar…

Anyways to my absolute shock, because of the 15 minute wait after we checked in, the manager came out and brought free glass of champagne for everyone that was waiting.

When we were eventually seated, the manger again came out and apologized for the wait and also sent us 3 free appetizers!

I have no idea if this special treatment was directly correlated to AMEX calling to make the reservation on my behalf but that certainly has NEVER happened to me before.

Recap

While the AMEX Concierge isn’t a service that I use very often, as seen in the above example, it worked like a charm. Again I have no idea if the manager of RPM was aware that our reservation had been made by AMEX Concierge, but in all my years of dining, I have never had an experience like that.

Since the AMEX Concierge is ultimately something you are paying for via the $450 Annual Fee on the AMEX Platinum, going forward I definitely will be trying to use the service more. This is especially true if my requests include anything expensive like dinner reservations, hotel bookings, etc.

At a minimum, it is awesome for getting last minute dinner reservations to “sold out” places!

If anyone else has any experiences with the AMEX Platinum Concierge, feel free to leave a comment!

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