The benefits of the US version are well documented online, but I believe we haven’t as of yet had a proper account of what the Singapore version comes with. I bring this up because a fellow on the Telegram group sent me something interesting last week- the welcome brochure that comes with the Singapore version of the American Express Centurion card. Snopes has a useful piece on the card too, in case you want to delve deeper. In other words, the rumours preceded the reality. The funny thing is that the AMEX Centurion as we know it was only launched in 1999 in response to urban legends that circulated throughout the 80s and 90s about some super-exclusive card that American Express only issued to the wellest of the well-heeled. If you remembered in Singapore that you had left your favorite suit in a Hong Kong penthouse, the company would arrange to fetch it.Īs it turns out, a Black Card did exist back then, but it was introduced on a limited trial basis and abandoned in 1987. In the market for a red 1965 Ferrari? If you were a black-card holder, American Express would kick tires in the world’s fanciest used-car lots. Suppose, for example, on a 3-o’clock-in-the-morning whim, you decided to book a round-the-world trip American Express would accommodate you with a travel service staffed 24 hours a day. As far back as 1988, the Wall Street Journal was describing the benefits of this elusive card in hushed awe: The Centurion card (colloquially known as the Black Card) needs no introduction. I’m not sure what happened to that young lady in the end, suffice to say that if I had bothered to make eye contact and conversation instead of spending the remaining evening fondling and caressing the card, The Milelion might have Series A funding by now. Till this day I’m not sure if she was engaging in the most passive aggressive form of humblebragging, or whether she was genuinely oblivious as to the power she had in that purse, but in either case it was the first time I had seen a Centurion card up close and personal. She rummaged in her purse and tossed something on the table. “My mum gave me a sub card (it’s always a red flag when someone says “sub” card rather than “supp” card) and told me to just use it whenever”. “Oh,” she said, in a tone that could charitably approximate disinterest. That’s much more than I’d be getting if I were to use a general spending card like, say, the DBS Altitude or Citibank Premiermiles at 1.2 miles per dollar,” I lectured condescendingly, in a tone best approximating the protagonist from Love is a Fallacy, It gives me 10 UNI$ per $5 spent on restaurants and dining, or the equivalent of 4 miles per dollar. They don’t issue it anymore, but if you know what you’re doing it’s still possible to get it through certain channels. “Oh, it’s my UOB Preferred Platinum AMEX. When the time came to pay the bill, I took out my UOB Preferred Platinum AMEX, seeing this as a potential teachable moment to show her that I was not only capable of feeding myself without a bib, but also in managing the finances of a household. I had spent the entire evening beguiling her with tales of my adventures and conquests, and could tell she was attracted to my intellect, my punctuality, and the rampant virility suggested by the early onset of male pattern baldness. In my younger and more vulnerable years, I once went on a date with a young lady of better-than-average attractiveness. An updated review of the AMEX Centurion has been published.
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