It was one fine morning, when I got a call from a+9111XXXXXX number(11 is all Delhi), and when I picked up, the lady on the other side told me - Congrats Sir. Your name has been shortlisted for the AMEX -Kingfisher Gold Card. Our executive will me meeting you shortly and will give you a small demo for the same. She noted down my address(which in fact I spelled in a hurry, as I was getting ready for Office) and hung up. This is a usual scenario now-a-days when you get calls from XYZ stating sir, we are from ABC, DEF banks and offering you credit cards. So, it was not a great issue to excercise my mind. I just thought of Googling it in free time.
Didn’t got any chance that day to Google around for this, and I completely forgot this and went to sleep at night. The very next day, in the afternoon, I got the call from the local Bangalore AMEX office, as I believe, (one Bollywood style voice) to confirm my address so that the executive will visit the place and show the demo. Luckily, the person on the other side asked whether I know the details about the specific card. I told him NO and he goes on narrating. Usually it happens when all the executives have narrations in a pre-recorded style and they are not at all ready to listen other party’s views. He asked me
how many times I fly in a year -(this is a pure variable, as person like me in IT Cos know the sweetness of Bosses voice when they tell them that they have applied for leave)
what is the cost of each side fare - This is also variable, as today a lot of travel sites are offering a lot of different prices and sometimes I find some even cheaper than the Airlines Site
blah blah blah.
And then after approximate calculation from his end(I was only the listener), he told I usually spend 1, 00, 000(approx) for travel and 24, 000 in Mobile Biils(Thanks a lot to him, I found my root cause to have low bank balances). And he then started the benefits of the card in which I will get complimentary upgrade to gold class, complimentary Business class flying, complimentary lounge access, have reward points raining over me, which I can convert to X, Y, Z etc etc and finally came the piece of cake with an annual fee of Rs 5000.00.
Now comes the reality, The sector I belong to(my native), Kingfisher operates only RED service(No Business Class). Most of the times I fly to my home only, coz rest of the travels are arranged by office if it’s business purpose. Most of the time I prefer to fly direct flights(thank god my home sector is direct) and usually I prefer less travelling and waiting time, than to spend time with family. So I asked him, one simple question - Is it worthy, that only for accessing Lounge, I will pay Rs 5K per year.
The person then was very rude in his voice. He even started saying, you are using a credit card BOSS, nothing comes free(I am a platinum credit card user for last 1.5 years now). Then told you will be proud owner of AMEX card, that other people dream about(i thought who are these peoples who dream like these). So finally, I told do I need to pay 5K in order to dream like them.
The person was then extremely rude and stated enforcing me and showing me that I don’t even pose the status to have this card. I simply disconnected the phone saying please don’t try to force me for the things that I don’t require.
This was my short conversation with an AMEX executive and if this is the voice pattern of the sales executive’s of AMEX, it’s definitely going heights in India:)