American Express recently sent me a new card by courier. Or at least they tried to. Somewhere along the way the courier delivered it to the wrong address. So I’ve spent part of this evening on the phone to AmEx trying to get the undelivered card canceled and a new one issued.
So I rang customer support but with two companies involved and it being after 6 o’clock, I wasn’t overly confident of getting this sorted quickly. Having explained the situation to a rep he put me on hold for a short while and then I encountered something I’ve never experienced from a call centre – common sense.
Taking me off hold, the rep explained that he was about to patch some other people into the call – his supervisor and somebody form the courier company. Between the four of us we managed to get the situation sorted out quickly and clearly and all this outside normal office hours!
I can now go to an AmEx office tomorrow near work and pick up a temporary card until AmEx have sent me a new permanent one. Good job as I’m off on holidays next week. So well done to American Express for some excellent customer service.
I had a similar experience earlier this month with Amex. I was on a flight from Fort Lauderdale to NY LGA. I had 4 hours in between landing at LGA to get my homeward bound flight from JFK.
The flight from FTL was diverted to Atlanta because of storms in the NY area and we were delayed six hours. Whilst on the runway in Atlanta, I called Amex exlpained the situation and they reconfirmed my booking on the later flight out of JFK.
The call took 7 minutes and I made the flight home. No stress!
By: Mike on August 31, 2007
at 8:35 am
Believe it when you have the cold hard plastic in your hand.
I don’t know anybody else who uses Amex, by the way. Since the 1980s anyway. What do you like about it?
By: Dominic Sayers on August 31, 2007
at 8:52 am
This insidious American “customer service” attitude. Bah, how very un-English.
By: AA on August 31, 2007
at 9:14 am
Now have the cold hard plastic in my hand.
Don’t know what the benefits of the green charge card are but with the platinum charge card you get a whole raft of benefits the best of which are free lounge access with Priority Pass, excellent travel insurance and free supplemental cards (1 plat and 4 gold). If you travel a lot, the lounge pass and insurance more than cover the fee AmEx charge you for the card.
There’s a bunch of other stuff like airline and hotel offers and you get (or at least used to get) automatic upgrades with some car rental companies. The other thing that is useful is getting the concierge service to book tickets and reserve tables when you’re abroad.
Anyway Dom, I always had you down as a Diners Club man.
By: decster on August 31, 2007
at 1:58 pm
Amusingly I have just taken receipt of an Amex card. I didn’t really know what I was applying for, just that it delivered a ridiculous amount of AirMiles. Now if I buy a week’s groceries with it I get enough AirMiles to book a ticket on Virgin Galactic.
Who cares about customer service?
By: Dominic Sayers on September 5, 2007
at 3:56 pm