American Express Platinum Concierge Valentine Service

Update – American Express is the midst of updating the features on the Platinum Card. Some features mentioned on this page may be outdated. We expect the new features and information to be available later today.

Valentine’s Day is over now for 2009. But I’ll be honest to start, I’m not exactly a big valentine fan (after all, shouldn’t everyday – or at least once a week) be a valentine. It seems like more of an excuse for flower shops to make loads of cash over charging for roses!

This year, I was quite late in booking a dinner place for Mrs Credit Card. It was Friday the 13th (yeah right). I called a few swanky places near where I lived. The first place I called was Flemming’s Steak House. “Mr Credit Card, the only slots we have available was is at 4pm or 10:30pm!”. No way. I next called Morton’s Steak House. Same answer, seats only available after 10pm! Next, I called Nectar. Same answer, only after 10:30pm.

Next, I tried to call a few Spa’s as I thought it would be nice to get Mrs Credit Card a massage treatment. I called 2 places and was politely laughed at. “Sorry Sir, we are fully booked for massage therapy on Valentine’s Day!”.

I then decided to call my American Express Platinum Concierge and see if they could make any reservations for me. It was 11:00am when I made the call. The concierge person (who was a lady) listened to my request. I told her I wanted to reserve a restaurant near where I lived and also told her the places I have called. I even pulled up a website with all the restaurants where I lived. She thanked me, took down the URL of the website but insist they have “diners specialist” to take care of things. She also commented that based on the places I have called, she gathered that I wanted a restaurant that was shall we say “quite high end”. She promised that Amex will call me back by 2:00pm EST.

At precisely 2:00pm EST, I got a call from the folks at Platinum Concierge. They told me that a couple of places were available, but only at 9:15pm. So I decided to reserve the place at Trattoria San Nicola, a very homely Italian restaurant. She said she will call me back once the reservations were made.

Five minutes later, she called back and gave me my reservation number.

Now, I did all this behind Mrs Credit Card’s back. Now I have to find a baby sitter!

In the evening, Mrs Credit Card told me that she had a baby sitter and that she had made a reservations at Nectar at 8:00pm! I then told her about Valentine’s Day dinner. But she said she did not want to have dinner so late at 9:15pm. So rather than having a Valentine’s Day dinner, we’d had ours on Valentine’s eve!

On Saturday the 14th, our whole family had dinner at a restaurant at Chinatown!

But coming back to this Amex Platinum Concierge service. I was actually quite pleased to have used them. They were polite and managed to save my precious time. The more I think about it, the more I’m utilizing this service. If I make use of them at least 10 times a year, I think that would easily cover my annual fee! But thumbs up to them for their great service.