Let's start here with the usual - I have been an Amex card holder and customer for 49 years. During a good part of that time, I have been a Platinum Club member. I am just slightly elderly (okay 82), and I enjoy the Amex Lounges when I travel (when I can get in-check out Seattle's lounge sometime - impossible to crack without an unacceptable wait), but I took comfort in the fact that the P Card included airline insurance in case something went awry during my travel. I have never had to use this insurance. In July of this year, my wife and I took three 13 year olds to Milan, and we flew Biz Class on British Air, all of which I arranged thru Amex travel. $30.000 was the ticket price which of course, went right onto my P card Statement. That's all okay.On the way home (LA) we had to go home thru London, and catch a transfer to American Airlines which was flying "as" British Air. We had four hours to do this except the plane was very late picking up the five of us in Milan, waiting on tarmack at Heathrow for a very long time, we deboarded at the Brit Air terminal, we had to catch the bus to the American terminal, we drug three winey and hungry kids thru the very crowded airport,, and got to the American gate with 35 minutes to spare. American would not let us on the plane - they want a 45 minute deadline to board. American staff gave us vouchers for pizzas and a toothbrush, since the only flight we could get seats on was two days later on 7/23. We had to go into London with the kids, find a hotel, eat every meal out, taxis to cafes or restaurants and back to the airport. Everybody with me so far? For two days we accumulated 2000 dollars of expenses, and we kept every receipt for what we spent.Got home two days late (by now, the kids are missing school), called Amex, to start reimbursement process which I figured would be easy to process. Amex referred me to AIG which apparently handles all the refund and money issues for American Express. AIG's job is to NOT pay legitimate claims - that is probably why they have the contract with Amex. Documentation, explanations, requests for receipts two times over, denials, appeals, denail, roadblocks, denial. Different reasons for turning us down. And finally the whole process (four separate submissions) became so tiresome and burdensome, I gave up. I wrote AIG a letter saying "you did your job - you just saved Amex a documented and proven pay-out of $2000.My final shot was to email Amex and to let them know who they have working for them (no Pay AIG), but guess what? Amex has NO EMAIL ADDRESSES for customers. You must call. I was stunned.Okay, I call Customer Service to tell them how unresponsive AIG had been to my claim. I thought Amex should know who the company is that continued to deny my claim which I had Platinum Card Insurance for. I called Customer Service and got some (it sounded like) trainee who could not help me because he had no idea what I was talking about. All he would do was refer me back to AIG. I told the AIG lady who wore me down, that I was prepared to blast Amex and AIG on the internet. I wonder if ether party will read this. And would they even reply. Steven Schilling
