The Amex Platinum card (and some other ultra-premium Amex cards, including the Business Platinum, Hilton Aspire, and Delta Reserve cards) comes with a concierge service. I’ve used this concierge service in the past to secure hard-to-get dinner reservations (like the kitchen table at Alinea in Chicago) or other random requests. I have made many of those requests via email in the past, but beginning next month that will no longer be an option: The Points Guy reports that Amex will no longer offer concierge service via email beginning on August 18, 2021.
Unfortunately, beginning August 18, 2021 Amex is discontinuing the option to contact the Platinum concierge via email, saying that you can instead call the number on the back of your card and say “concierge”.
Personally, I’m bummed about this change. Unlike with my Chase Ritz Visa Infinite, I do not find that calling the number on the back of a Platinum card consistently leads to an immediate representative and some requests are just easier to put in writing and send off. The day I nearly forgot an important family member’s birthday, I was glad to email the concierge and get flowers delivered without making a phone call and having those around me hear that I’d forgotten to take care of it :-). And the time I was overseas and my bag broke and I was trying to run down a replacement in another foreign airport, the Platinum concierge was less helpful than I’d hoped, but I didn’t need to make an international call to the US and deal with the line breaking up — I just sent an email saying what I was looking for and they got back to me with a quick answer.
On the other hand, it sounds like email requests have been very slow to be handled recently, so maybe they just can’t keep up with the emails and are looking to eliminate frivolous requests by requiring a phone call.
If you are accustomed to emailing the Platinum concierge with your requests, make sure to get those requests in ASAP because soon they won’t be handling them anymore via email.
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I’m new to the platinum world- could I use concierge to cancel an Iberia awards booking?? Have tried to call 20 times per day for the last two weeks to no avail- I wait on hold for awhile and then an automated message tells me the lines are too busy and to try again later. Tried DM on Twitter and they tell me I need to call
lol.
let us know how that goes.
So… does that mean that no, platinum concierge doesn’t help with award bookings?
No, that’s not a service they provide. If you want help booking an award, you hire an award booking service or join our Facebook group and ask questions to learn how to do it yourself.
It took three or four days but the concierge service got me a hard to get dinner reservation in Las Vegas. I’m very pleased.
Well, that’s a loss. I preferred email because the phone reps have been too chatty. When I called for a birthday dinner reservation, the rep asked how old I’d be. Umm, none of your business just make the reservation please!
Phone wait times have been long (at least an hour plus recently) but they do have a call back service.