Lai See | Amex black card holder complains of 'shabby' service

Our recent piece noting that Amex was doubling fees for holders of its Centurion card - aka the black card - to HK$38,000 prompted one of our readers, a card holder, to investigate the highly priced, rare and exclusive services he was paying for.

He called the Centurion number one evening recently and was directed to press a key for "travel services".

"I am appalled to report I waited on 'hold' in a 'queue' for 40 minutes and was still unable to have anyone attend to my enquiry as all their staff were busy!" he writes. He says that in desperation he called the main number 30 minutes later from another phone, "so as not to hang up and lose my precious place in the queue".

He advises the service centre was in "a shabby state of affairs".

A woman explained to him that the travel team sat some way from her and she could only take a message. "Finally, after much discussion, she agreed to try and indeed called me back [on my spare extension line] to explain there were only seven staff on duty and they were all busy on the phone."

After waiting 40 minutes, our reader gave up and hung up. "The Centurion appears to have insufficient soldiers under his command to manage even the simplest task … hardly worth the HK$19,800 fee let alone the outrageous HK$38,800 they are now extorting from cardholders," he remarked.