
How to Make Visa Obey Your Every Desire: The Credit Card Concierge Experiment - urbannomad
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/05/01/credit-card-concierge/
======
jballanc
You know, honestly these requests weren't all that outrageous...

I've recently become rather disheartened at just how little "extra" it takes
to impress American's these days. Many societies around the world take it for
granted that services is a part of...well..."service". For example, when I was
in Turkey with my wife, we were a just your average cafe. We really like the
little tea spoons that they had, and wanted some for home. We asked the waiter
if the cafe had any extra they would mind selling us. He told us that the ones
they had were all dinged and used, and wouldn't it be better to have some
brand new spoons? We agreed, and he sent one of the other boys working in the
back down to the local store to buy some for us while we sat and sipped our
tea.

Ordinary little cafe...nothing really that out of the ordinary...so why is
this so foreign in America?

~~~
hnhg
My parents both can speak a little of the language though they're not turkish
at all. The overcharging of tourists there is ridiculous (in Istanbul at
least). You pay a much higher price as a foreigner than any local. So it's
possible you got a very high mark-up on the tea that paid for the spoons.

~~~
danudey
A few things here:

1\. How much more money do westerners travelling to Turkey make yearly, vs.
native Turks? You might get overcharged, but it's not like you can't afford
it.

2\. You might get overcharged, but it's still cheaper than it would be in
richer countries.

3\. Most importantly, countries like Turkey tend (in my limited experience) to
have a less fixed price structure. Bartering (at least in the markets) is
completely beyond my ability, since this isn't something I grew up with in
North America, but I have an Israeli friend who will back-and-forth with a
vendor until he offers to sell for one tenth of his original price (and he's
still making a killing).

The first two points make me out to be an apologist, but it's not like he's
charging you $10 more for the tea vs. locals and using his massive margins to
throw in a $0.50 set of tea spoons for free so you'll tell your friends.

------
encoderer
I have the Schwab 2% cash back Signature card.

I've used the concierge service for some awesome things:

1\. I knew I was going to propose to my GF in St. Augustine on a long weekend
but I'd never been there. So I asked for a complete scouting report. Lists of
good restaurants (plus reservations), good places to ask her, etc. They came
through in awesome style.

2\. We were shopping in Chicago and she fell in love with, but didn't buy, a
Coach purse. Her birthday was a month later so, back home, a thousand miles
away, I went to buy that purse. Sold out. They checked near by stores: Sold
Out. I check websites: Sold Out.

I called my Concierge. They contacted Coach for me. They verified that every
single Coach store was sold out of this purse, when the next shipment was
coming in, which stores would get the purses from that very next shippment,
and how much shipping would cost if I ordered from the closest one and had it
delivered.

3\. When a Generic prescription drug became suddenly unavailable, I asked
about "why". They refused to help because of the questions Medical nature.
Even when I told them it was just personal FYI and I wasn't actually taking
the medicine (a lie, but i thought it might work)

~~~
varaon
>They refused to help because of the questions Medical nature. Even when I
told them it was just personal FYI and I wasn't actually taking the medicine
(a lie, but i thought it might work)

I suspect that this is a liability issue.

------
chaosmachine
_"But that’s a lot of work, so I’m hoping you guys can do it for me. Just call
and give me a daily affirmation."_

 _"You want us to call and tell you you’re a good person?"_

 _"That’s right."_

So, was this the inspiration for Awesomeness Reminders?
<http://www.awesomenessreminders.com/>

~~~
zackattack
Yes

~~~
zackattack
Maybe

------
Groxx
Main problem I see with this sort of thing:

The money to do this comes from _somewhere_. My location guesses: increased
interest rates, and increased POS charges. All of which ultimately means less
money for you, and less for everywhere you buy things.

Another interesting thing I've read somewhere, and would be interested in a
link if someone knows of it: all/many of these higher-perk cards charge the
merchants more when they're used. It's best for businesses if you use the most
basic cards, or _far_ better if you use cash.

But I just dislike credit card companies. And their "rating" systems. I must
be cranky right now or something, because I feel like spreading the dislike :\

~~~
Timothee
As a foreigner, the US credit card and rating system puzzled me a bit.

But the most annoying thing about it is that it's difficult not to be part of
it. If you have credit cards or not, you _will_ have a credit score and that
score _will_ be used when you want to buy a house for example…

For a couple of years after moving here, I was using either cash or a debit
card, but I switched to credit card for a lot of things mostly because you
kind of have to play in the credit score game.

~~~
gaius
You only need to be a part of it if you ever want anyone to extend any sort of
credit to you, no?

~~~
encoderer
Including cell phones, satellite television, etc. in short, you ignore your
fico at your own peril

~~~
tptacek
I'm not sure your FICO matters too much to DirecTV.

If you don't want to participate in the credit system _and_ you ignore your
FICO, you'll notice when you (a) buy/rent your home and (b) get a cell phone.
I think that may be about it.

~~~
eli
Or buy/lease a car (unless you have cash up front). Or if you're unluckily
enough to want to work for an employer who runs a background check.

~~~
tptacek
Someone really needs to set up a site that names and shames knowledge work
employers who run credit checks on candidates. You don't want to work for any
of them.

You're right, to an extent, about the cars: you will get poorer terms for your
car with a wrecked FICO score. You will not however be at any risk of _not
getting_ the car, unlike that apartment building you really like, which simply
won't rent to you because of your credit.

~~~
rdl
I would be fine with credit checks and criminal background checks being run on
all final stage candidates, with consent. I hired a felon once and ended up
losing seven figures. Not doing background checks on someone in a key position
with access to customer information, etc. seems irresponsible.

A low credit score should not be a disqualifier, but should be explained. If
someone had gotten divorced or medical expenses or something, that isn't a
concern (and I would consider advancing money to clear it up for any clearance
investigations later), but if it is due to gambling, drug, etc. addiction, I
would be very dubious unless there were a way to show it was not an ongoing
risk. (similarly, there are some criminal convictions I would consider benign
or even slightly positive, and others which would be disqualifies)

------
alexbowman
Bloomberg have somewhat offered this service.

One lucky enough to have a Bloomberg terminal (providing financial news and
information services) have access to a helpdesk built into the software via
the messaging system (to query data, news, etc). This helpdesk has had huge
appeal in other areas - booking restaurants, book recommendations, ideas for
things to do on holiday - for many many years.

When paying at least $15k/year for such a terminal (often much more), and a
client often having hundreds installed, if not thousands, it is a beautiful
example of going a little extra for a lot of goodwill.

~~~
ig1
The Bloomberg helpdesk was never designed to be used in that way, but
generally the guys and gals staffing it were given quite a lot of flexibility
in answering clients.

Bloomberg actually took quite an interesting approach to staffing their
helpdesk, everyone (except for developers) who joins the company from
university has to spend a few months working on the help desk. So all the help
desk staff are highly educated locals rather than outsourced labour. They
probably have some of the most capable helpdesk staff in the technology
industry.

------
binarymax
I wonder if you could harness this for serious information research. The grey
area is interesting on _5\. We cannot research your school paper, or do your
job for you_

examples: Find out if [your] anonymously uploaded website X violates anything
in patent Y? What is the contact information for CEO in some big company Z? I
could easily think of lots of others!

Might be worth a try at least and see how far they can really go :)

------
Alarmed
I've done security assessments of outsourcers providing this service before.
One was mostly aligned with credit card companies, one was an company that
offered this in conjunction with travel insurance. Interestingly, all agents
in both cases were in the US. (It's possible some call QA was offshored, I
don't recall in these instances but that's very common.)

In my review, the providers had little familiarity with the data security
controls of the credit card industry (aka PCI). One was PCI certified, one was
not but 'working on it'. The one that had been certified had somehow convinced
their QSA (the PCI auditor) to not review the systems their agents used, only
the core infrastructure.

The provider with home-based agents let their agents use their own computers
to service callers, and it was quiet possible that the agent had never met
anyone from the hiring company face-to-face.

Now, as a matter of course, probably only 1-3% of the calls actually required
the agent take a credit card number (to order something for the customer).
Most of the time the agents were just answering questions. Most of the agents
would never see the caller's credit card number from the issuing bank.

From a information security point-of-view I wouldn't have any problem using
the providers I reviewed (although, even as a frequent traveller, I've _never_
had an occasion where it seemed like it would be useful), but I'd stop short
of giving them my credit card number.

------
nitfol
I was excited to try this service out after reading the article. I called them
up, and after a couple minutes on hold, was connected to Michael. I didn't
need to enter my account number, but it's possible they used my phone number
to know that I have a credit card.

I asked him if there were any local stores that sold caffeine-free Diet
Mountain Dew. He put me on hold for a couple minutes and came back, asking if
I had tried Wal-Mart or grocery stores. I told him I hadn't seen it there. He
said that he found some Facebook page talking about caffeine-free Mountain
Dew, but he was unable to access it because Facebook was blocked from his
location. He suggested I search on google for it myself. He apologized for
being unable to help me.

So I searched and the second hit pointed me to
<http://www.pepsiproductfacts.com/storelocator/index600.html> and there is a
store 19 miles from me that sells the "extremely limited" caffeine-free Diet
Mountain Dew.

I'm not impressed.

~~~
DougBTX
Or rather, Google made the more lasting impression first: that finding things
is easy.

------
runjake
This 4HWW blog post was submitted here about 6 months ago here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1321730>

In the comments section, user feb basically asked HN if our users could verify
this is legit, but he didn't get a response then. Anyone?

~~~
Timothee
My wife's card is a Signature (mine should be too I would think but is not for
some reason).

I could look into it tomorrow.

I'm curious to know what they can really do for you. His examples were mostly
finding and compiling information that wasn't necessarily hard to find but
just annoying or possibly tedious.

That in itself could be interesting to take advantage of, especially if
they're fast.

But could you do something a bit more advanced: let's say you're traveling for
X days somewhere, maybe you could ask for them to put together for you a
complete program of what's good to see there, places to eat, train schedule,
while considering details like days museums are closed, weather... That sounds
a bit much but if they can actually do that kind of things, it can get
interesting.

What about patent or trademark search? Salary/stock options comparison in your
sector? Best price for specific car? How can I jailbreak my phone? Can you
send a letter to my landlord about the broken dishwasher? I'm curious about
the limits really...

------
bergie
I've had a Diners Club card with concierge service for a couple of years now,
and have used the service only once. Based on talking to people who work in a
concierge company they can in most cases only do the things you could've done
with a little Googling yourself.

It is nice to have somebody look for flights, hotels or restaurants for you,
but in general by doing it yourself you get it done a lot more quickly. 5
minutes to findband book a hotel using the phone browser, vs. about the same
time on the phone, and waiting them 12 hours to get it done...

------
seles
Is it just me or does that sound like a fun job, to answer stranger's strange
requests?

------
joshu
I'm disappointed. I was hoping that they would explain how to efficiently use
this.

I use the Amex Platinum concierge when I travel. "I need reservations at good
restaurants for these three nights." They lock in the reservations and email
me a schedule. Then I go back and try to use open table and/or trip advisor to
find better stuff and cancel/replace as necessary.

I often get the feeling I am Doing It Wrong, and wish people would share the
right way.

------
arithmetic
As I was reading this article, I was thinking, "Really? You can ask that and
they do it for you?". It just never occurred to me that I would need a
personal assistant to help me find a tub of nachos (or help me with a
crossword or any other chores). I just find it..weird.

On the other hand, this article pretty much sold me into determining if I need
a Visa Signature card.

------
makmanalp
I wonder how they'd scale up this service if suddenly everyone wanted it. It
seems pretty awesome though, especially if you're the type of person who deals
with lots of small problems daily.

~~~
CamperBob
It doesn't sound like they actually do much of anything beyond typing your
request into Google. It's not as if they sent someone to Austin to buy a
gallon of queso dip, or whatever.

The reference desk at a major metropolitan library would probably be able to
field some of the inquiries the author tried, and without charging whatever
ungodly annual fee Visa is probably getting for that card.

~~~
kenjackson
Actually, I suspect its some Googling, but also a lot of phone calls. For
example, getting in store stock info usually requires calling.

------
dmoney
Any idea how much these cost, or how much it would cost to get this service
without the card?

Will they order and buy stuff for you (e.g. from Amazon), or just tell you
where it is?

~~~
gaius
<http://www.quintessentially.com/join-us/> says it starts at #1000/year.

------
there
_“Money is no object,” I said, “but I am on a budget.”_

~~~
nitrogen
Possible translation: "Whatever it takes, but no more"?

