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.