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my ihg account earning preference is for airlines miles and remains that way. can I buy “bonus points package” when booking (with the aim to get ihg reward points)? thanks.

Just wanted to thank you for your timely post about getting the 4x travel offer for AMEX Business referrals. I saw your post yesterday and had my Player 2 refer me for Blue Business Plus. Now in addition 15k points each, Player 2 will get 6x (4x for travel plus 2x standard) for travel. With a cruise balance to pay, that’s another 30k points 🙂
Your travel blog is the best!

As a Centurion cardholder of 22 years, I finally gave up my Centurion membership.

As a loyal Amex customer since 1988, I worked hard to help the team at Centurion understand how appalling their customer service had become, how untrained their agents were, and how their new team structure vs dedicated contacts has led to booking errors, mistakes, and the general feeling one gets when calling a remote call center that knows nothing about you.

This is everything Centurion claims it is not.

I tried reaching out to senior team members at Amex with no response. They simply don’t care.

I finally spoke at length with a very sweet and nice “executive customer service” team member I had spoken to a year ago when things started going off the rails and she promised me that she would discuss my issues with “management”, but in the end was given the run around with the obligatory “I’m so sorry we can’t meet your needs and that we are losing you.

I personally was mentored and coached for years by an old leader of American Express named Alan Loren. He would be turning in his grave if he knew how terrible the Centurion product had become. He was a believer in the customer experience and in those days management was willing to speak directly to a customer to understand their concerns. No longer 🙁 

AEXP happily lost me as a Centurion customer after 22 years, without doing anything to try to make amends for the terrible service received.

Here are some of the shortfalls and issues with the card that everyone should know:

– Multiple booking errors leading to problems with travel, lost seats, lost flights, etc.

– Multiple times I received no call back from an agent I had spoken to at length and literally no way to get back in touch with them, since there is no longer a personal point of contact for Centurion members (just a large team who often isn’t available anyways and then your call goes into a pool). Centurion has become a faceless, nameless call center experience.

– There’s been a dramatic elimination of historical benefits, personalized events, and special perks – only to be replaced by a complicated grouping of “experiences”, which quickly become unavailable anyway – “Oh sorry”, they say on the same morning an event becomes available for booking, “the event you want isn’t available anymore We can put you on a waitlist”. They should be ashamed of this new experience program.

– Gone is Hyatt, United, and other airline and hotel programs where status was afforded.

– When booking flights, almost always, the travel team couldn’t even find the same rates I could find online. I literally booked 5 business class seats to Turkey last summer for 1/2 the cost they quoted. When I pointed it out and showed them, they simply said they couldn’t get the same rates – baffling, as they are supposed to be the experts. They don’t even take the time to shop, offer creative suggestions that any pro would offer, or even understand or know the properties and routes they are quoting.

– When trying to book a difficult restaurant reservation through the “concierge” they called back a day later saying that nothing was available, but when I called the restaurant right afterwards, they gave me a table.  

Their concierges can’t even get what any normal person can get, making you wonder why they are even there. It’s become better to simply do things yourself vs working with the Centurion team.

– When I cut my spend a year ago, in protest of their terrible service, saying I would up it again when they proved they would improve, I never even got a call asking why. They simply don’t care and Centurion cardholders are treated like everyone else. There is no more special treatment or special feeling.

Which begs the question – what is one paying $5000 for each year? Do they even really want to have this offering anymore? Do they still care about the customer experience or is it just about the bottom line? Do they even customer Customer Lifetime Value anymore?

There are so many more examples of terrible service, whittled down options comparable to Platinum and many more instances of a lack of travel knowledge by their team.

It seems Amex has given up on their Centurion cardholders, many of whom are their most loyal supporters and brand ambassadors. I feel given up on and am saddened by what has become of this iconic card.

Greg/Nick – Looking at the latest Bask Bank offer for AAdvantage miles. Would love to hear your viewpoint if worth it.

I’m curious how you MS’d $500,000 for you and your wife to get Delta Diamond. Are you using Simon Mall? Im just trying not to get the Amex ban hammer, thanks!

Got into this game over a year ago. Love it. I have a question / idea for article:

I own rental properties. My monthly mortgage payments are about 17k. I was thinking, as my accountant says I can write it off as a business expense, to use plastiq for those… The question is… What is the best way. What will be the best bang for my buck..

Thanks for maintaining this page and answering people’s questions for all to see. On your best offers page, would it be possible to filter credit cards by card association networks (Visa, MC, etc.)? There are times when I am specifically looking for a big bonus on a Mastercard because I can hit min spend with Plastiq paying a mortgage with MC but not Visa or Amex. I imagine there are other instances where one would want to go after a bonus from a specific network, and this extra filter would make your great resource even better. Thanks for considering it!

Saw your aug 27,2017 article on changes by Chase re: double dipping Preferred and Reserve. Have there been any recent data points on whether someone who got Preferred bonus in 2014 (still have it) can get a Reserve card and the bonus. And are the steps still the same to preserve the existing points?Thanks for any help.

Nick/Greg, I was on my (wife’s AU) Amex account this evening looking for the Air New Zealand offer. On my no-annual-fee Hilton, I found: “NEW No Foreign Transaction Fees Use your Hilton Honors Card and don’t worry about Foreign Transaction Fees.” Did I miss this being reported somewhere, and as important, does it apply to any other no-/low-annual-fee Amex cards?

Hello
I am holding US passport. I will be traveling Thailand next month, and I will fly from Thailand to transit at SHENZHEN CN, SZX airport for 5 hours before coming back to the US. Do you know if I need a visa for this 5 hours transiting? I get different answers for this question. Thank you.

Have you ever done a post on MagsForMiles? I get my wife’s people magazine subscription there. It costs 2200 miles for a year. I found the same subscription online for about $76 dollars. That’s roughly 3.4 cents per mile. That’s a pretty good conversion rate!

Hi Greg,

Not sure if you are already aware that Amex might be having a large-scale problem with its welcome bonus posting. It’s been a couple of statements since meeting the spending requirement for my SPG card (organic spend), and yet the bonus starpoints have not posted. I was just told by an Amex representative that the bonus points are not showing up in the system despite the fact that I met all the requirements, and that they have recently become aware of such occurrences which impacted many customers. This is quite different from their answers for my calls a few weeks ago on this problem, when they just cited terms and conditions, and asked me to wait.

I wonder if you have started seeing any large-scale welcome bonus issues with Amex?

Hi Greg,
I got to meet yup at a FTU earlier this year. You mentioned that you or others use meetup to meet other points/miles enthusiasts. I’m from the MetroDetroit area and would love to meet others in the hobby. Any suggestions how to do this?

Thanks!

Do you happen to know if the Citi Double Cash Back works on gift cards? Have googled around and can’t find anything. Thank you!

Hi,

Thanks for all the great content. Here’s an idea for a blog post. In one of your emails you say “It’s not unusual for a person to earn 200,000 or more points in a single “churn” (…) every 3 or 4 months!”

I have been getting lots of credit cards starting this year, but after just six months or so I feel like I have gotten them all. I got all the best cards from the major airlines and hotels.

So, how can I keep getting points like it seems so many of you more experienced folks do?

Thanks,

Rodrigo
…

Hi Greg, I don’t understand the current rules for Delta credit cards. Ok I understand it’s once per lifetime, but are they grouping the cards together. If I have had the Delta gold card can I still get the Platinum and receive the sign up bonus? How about the Business cards?
Thanks Jim

Will I qualify for the citi a advantage consumer card bonus if it’s been more than 24 months since I closed my last one but less than 24 months since I closed a citibusiness advantage card? Thank you.

Hi FM,

Just want to let you know that there is one more round of Bluebird shutting down started today. I just received an email that I can’t load anymore my Blue bird which I had for a couple of months.

I opened it in January after Redcard fail and I totally did about $5K in three months. Very slow usage and sometimes had money in the card for long periods. But nothing worked. Just one more data point, I never had Serve – First BB, then closed it to open Redbird and closed it to open BB and now shut down.

It seems there is no pattern, Amex just does it to all!

Wow I am really overwhelmed trying to find a use for Citi Thankyou points. I am needing to book flights for 4 people from phl to pvr or bwi to pvr. I am not sure how to go about doing it. on southwest it is super easy with my chase points, it’s only 79k points, but trying to figure out how to do it with citi points is really hard. I only have 65k citi points so I will have to pay, but can’t figure out if it is worth it or should I just fly SW and use the citi points for something else? Thanks for any help you can give me. or even point me to a forum where I can get some info.

Are you the Shawn Comer from 3/3 BCT?

Thought I’d share my gift card nightmare as a cautionary tale…..

I purchased two $50 Target gift cards from staples.com on 8/3. On 8/4 I received the standard email that they had shipped. Typically this is followed up within a day with the egift card email from giftcardmall.com. Unfortunately this didn’t happen.

I let the country for Italy and upon return home on 8/20 I contacted Staples. Still no card. Contacted them again. They referred me to Gift Card Mall. I had to call them three times and finally on 8/27 I received a customer support email with links to the gift cards. I loaded these to my Target mobile account. A few days later when I went to use them, these e-gift cards had changed status and showed with no value as “Force Closed.”

Target states that a “third party vendor” (GCM) reported them as lost or stolen. Gift Card Mall says they are viable numbers and there are no issues with the cards and that they would not report cards stolen. Long story short, I’ve spent at least 50 hours on the phone over the last month-and-a-half and have gotten nowhere. Gift Card Mall says I am incorrect, the cards are valid, and if I have an issue call Target. Target says since they didn’t issue the cards they can do nothing, so call Gift Card Mall. Gift Card Mall says call Staples. Staples says all they do is take payment, so call Gift Card Mall. Each and every vendor is doing nothing but passing the buck. But the worst part is that Gift Card Mall has been quite rude and abrupt in their replies and not at all willing to even discuss this with me. My suggestion to each and every vendor has been to get on the phone and talk to each other (hey Target, call Gift Card Mall), but no one is willing to do that, no one ever follows up as promised and I never get any calls back. So every time I contact any of the vendors I am basically starting over.

So here I am with two “stolen” gift cards. Let’s hope Chase will help since in theory I did not receive my merchandise. Or perhaps I should initiate a police report since I was sold “stolen” merchandise?

FM have you seen the new British airways card with 100k possible bonus yet? It seems like its too good to be true. I just opened the Citi Thank you card a few weeks ago, but I really would love 100k miles, should I jump on it right away or will it be around in a month?