While clearing my desk yesterday, I came across a mail that I did not open. I opened it and realized that it was the American Express Platinum Credit Card Year End Expense Summary. It actually came in a booklet and had 11 pages.

The first page had a table that broke down the expenses by month and category. The categories were travel, restaurants, merchandise, auto, other merchants and fees and adjustments. Below that table was a graph showing the percent of each category that was charged to the card. Here was my breakdown.

Travel – 10%
Restaurants – 24%
Merchandise – 24%
Auto – <1% Other Merchants - 61% Fees & Adjustments - 2% Page 4 broke down the expenses by month, category and furthermore by myself and Mrs Credit Card. From page 5 until page 11, they showed the precise charges by category. Hence for travel, I can see all travel related expenses on one page. So here is a summary of the spending on the Amex Platinum Card last year. Total spending : $43,179.74 Travel : $4,124.34 Restaurant : $1,412.06 Merchandise : $10,407.05 Auto : $46.83 Other Merchants : $26,322.21 Fees & Adjustments : $867.25 Bear in mind that I use this card mainly for business expenses. I use the Blue Cash as the main card for our personal expenses. I really like this booklet as it is really professional done and I can keep them for my records rather than having to keep all the statements in a file. All my business expense are now in a single booklet.

I normally get joint marketing mails from American Express with their other merchant partners. Today, I got a mail from Chase!

On the face of it, they ‘wrote’ me a check of $8.50. Yes, a pathetic eight dollars and fifty cents. Being who I am (Mr Credit Card), I decided to investigate further. I opened the letter and this was what I saw :

First, I saw the following headline :

2% Back on Your Credit Card Purchases

Wow! I thought Chase was offering a card upgrade or something. However, upon further reading, I found out that Chase has partnered with “Greatfun”. I turns out that if I cashed in that check, then I can earn 2% cash rebates for up to the first $5000 of purchases on my Chase credit card. That means that I could earn up to $100.

But that is not all, it went on to say that I will be entitled to discounts with certain merchants like Sharper Image (thought they went bust?), Eddie Bauer etc. ut here is the catch :

“When you cash the attached check, we will automatically bill the first semi-annual fee of $59.99 to your Chase credit card account for a membership in Great Fun, unless you call 1-877-228-2667 to cancel during the thirty-day trial period.”

So let me get this straight, I am given $8.50, but have to pay back $59.99 immediately? The I have to pay that amount every six months. But as a consolation, I’ll get a $100 rebate but only if I spend an additional $5,000 on my card!

Needless to say, I passed on this “offer”. You can get discounts on merchants from the merchants themselves, from coupons and also from reward credit cards. To actually have to pay for a membership (about $120 a year) just to get discounts seems a little silly. How did this proposal even get past the marketing department of credit card companies beats me!

But since I got this letter, I decided to investigate more into what this Great Fun thing was all about. So I decided to check out their website. It turns out that this was actually a shopping portal where you can get discounts from their merchant partners like GAP, Old Navy and other familiar brands. It also turns out that Great Fun is owned by Treligent (and there are lots of complaints from folks on how Trilegiant tries to get you to sign up for their membership site like this one). To be able to get these discounts and “savings”, you need to join their monthly membership.

When I clicked on their sign up page, it tells you that you can have a $1 trial for 30 days. And if you do not cancel within 30 days, you will be billed $19.95 a month. So altogether, you will be paying over two hundred dollars a year for the privilege of getting discounts from common well known retailers.

I have a real problem with this. Firstly, retailers are always having sales and discounts and if you have been a customer and they got your email address, then you will surely get emails flooding your inbox whenever there is a sale going on. Secondly, there are tons of coupons and deal sites that will search the best deals for you and present them on their website. You can sign up for their newsletters for free and get updates on these deals. There are also a ton of deal of the day sites that function more or less the same way.

These days, every major issue has online shopping portals which function very similarly to how great fun works. But it goes one step better. Aside from offering deals, credit card shopping portals allow you to either earn extra points or cash rebates when you shop with their merchant partners. This is a much better deal than what Trilegiant is offering. Best of all, you do not have to pay any monthly membership fee.

Our staff writer Jason Steele has also uncovered that Trilegiant has partnered with Budget Rent A Car and unscrupulously tried to get him to enroll. You can read about the whole episode in this series of post.

Part 1: Budget Rent A Car Gives Credit Card Numbers To Scammers

Part 2: More on Negative Option Billing

Part 3″ Budget Has No Clue Which Credit Card They Gave To Scammers

The Sad Truth About The Budget Trilegiant Scam

This post is written by Mrs Credit Card :

I was very excited to hear about the new exhibition at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia – Star Wars : Where Science Meets Imagination. It started on February 9 and ends on May 4. http://www2.fi.edu/

One of main attractions is a 4 minute “ride” in a reconstructed Millennium Falcon which costs $5 each, over & above the admission charges. Since the kids have a day off on President’s Day, I decided to call go online to get the tickets. It turned out to be a 2 hour quest and here’s my story.

1. I went to http://www2.fi.edu/ and found out from the ticketing link that American Express cardholders have $2 discount off the adult price but I need a promotional code. I called American Express Concierge to request for the code.

2. I explained the situation to the customer service agent – Leqina (may not be the right spelling) and she will check so I had to be on hold.

3. Minutes later, Leqina said they could not locate the discount code in their program but the box office is willing to give me the “partner deal” discount which is $2 off each adult ticket.

4. I said OK and clarified all the convenience fees. I informed her that I wanted to include the tickets for the Millennium Falcon ride and ask her to clarify if those will be charged convenience fees too. She said OK & will check.

5. Minutes later, Leqina came back on the phone and said yes, the $5 ticket charge for the Millennium Falcon ride will be subject to the convenience fees charge. I reckoned that it will be very popular, I might as well get it now in case it gets sold out when I am there.

6. We confirmed the dates that we wanted the admission and the types & number of tickets we need. The total excluded the Millennium Falcon ride and asked her why it was not included. She said it has tp be processed separately. I told her it shouldn’t be the case as the ticket window on the site allows me to purchase the option in one transaction. She nicely insisted that the system is such and even checked with the box office guy. By now, it’s been an hour already so I said OK – whatever you say. Just get me those tickets.

7. She went ahead to confirm my purchase of the admission tickets & reminding me that they are non refundable.

8. Then she said please hold on while I process the second transaction. I was on hold for so long and finally she came back with bad news. Tickets for Millennium Falcon is all sold out on President’s Day. I was furious. I reminded her of my point 6 above and insisted that they voided the transaction and rebook us on the weekend dates that have the available space for Millennium falcon. I believe that she and the box office agent made a mistake when they refuse to put them in one transaction as they would have known the problem before the transaction went through. I can only imagine my kids disappointment when we get there & they are not able to get in.

9. Leqina went back to box office and I was on hold again. I have been on the phone for an hour and a half already. while I was on the phone with her, I keep going to the internet to try to book the tickets through the ticketing link but there was 2 error messages after I selected the Millennium Falcon option. The first error message was I provided the wrong discount code and the second error message said the the Millennium Falcon Ride was no longer available.

10. She came back and said the box office manager agreed to cancel the transaction. She asked if we want to continue to find another date. I said yes.

11. Leqina came back on the phone to say that they finally found a date that can accommodate the Millenium Falcon Ride – March 15. I said OK, please proceed. Leqina said thank you and please hold while we process the transaction.

12. Then she came back to say she has completed the transaction for the admission and to give her a few moments to complete the second part of my transaction.

13. Many “moments” later, she came back and said there has been a problem. They have a problem booking for the Millennium falcon Ride and needs more time to work on it. I said OK but I have to go and pick up my kids now and ask her to call me back an hour later.

14. One hour later, she told me that in fact ALL the Millenium Falcon tickets are SOLD OUT ! I cannot believe my ears. Al the way to May 4 ! I wasted 2 hours plus for this !

I am so exhausted just retelling this experience. It is ridiculous to think that Franklin Institute allowed that to happen. I will try my best to alert the local media.

While it’s nice to have the platinum card, sometimes I wonder if the concierge service is overrated? Am I being too demanding? Care to share your amex concierge experience?