American Express has apparently run out of metal cards for their Personal platinum product. When new changes went into effect on March 30th, one of the changes was that the card would now be made out of metal. It was possible to request a new metal card and it was showing as deliverable the following business day.
Few readers did receive their new card on the 31st (shipped by FedEx) but American Express have changed most of these requests to US Mail instead. In addition it’s no longer possible to request a new metal card. Note that this only applies to people that requested a new metal card under damage/replacement (a specific option was also added for metal cards), if you requested a replacement card due to it being lost or stolen then you should receive a metal card. Reddit user nealcaffreyy was offered 3,000 points due to the inconvenience when they called in to complain. Other users were either offered no points or a random offer of points.
It seems like poor planning on American Express’ behalf due to the fact that the Chase Sapphire Reserve ran into the same issue and American Express had an existing cardholder base and specifically gave them the option to request a metal card. It also seems like poor customer service to say that something will be next day shipped and then change it to regular US Mail.
At the end of the day, it’s a metal card and card aesthetics should mean very little to readers. American Express obviously upgraded to metal cards for a reason and I’m somewhat perplexed they haven’t been able to meet the demand. There is also an imgur album of the new card that can be found here.
