What is the password for the American Express Preferred Seating?

I am fairly new to the American Express Preferred Seating, which is often used through ticketmaster to book for sports events or shows. As an American Express Platinum Card holder, I decided to contact AMEX customer service and query about the secret password that was needed to get the special seats.
February 17, 2013
Just-For-Fun

What I discovered came to my surprise. I wouldn't like to get into trouble, through if I provide you subtle hints and you managed to guess it then... well, I guess that's OK!

I will however stress that I do not take any responsibility on providing information to non-amex card holders. If you are booking for an event and you are not a card holder then you are solely responsible for your actions.

I did contact the customer service number, which is a 10 digit phone number minus the American area code.

A nice AMEX lady informed me on the benefit program and how it works. She mentioned that she was unable to provide me the number unless I provided her my card number. Straight away I thought to myself, "that's good, at least there's some enforcement and exclusivity to AMEX card holders". She continued to mention that the password was linear for everyone, i.e. I didn't get my own password.

URGH?! This kinda threw me off, because now I was thinking that if I booked using the password and not use my AMEX card, would I be able to place the transaction and get the tickets? She confirmed that there's no validation checks when purchasing the tickets and I would be able to use another non-AMEX card.

Supposedly, Ticketmaster do however send a report to Amex on a monthly basis on the individuals who booked in the American Express Seating. I don't know what they do with this information, maybe they do validate that the person is actually an AMEX card holder, though if I booked some tickets with 3 weeks before the event , wouldn't a monthly report be useless as the event had already passed? They could track the person though would that stop people using quasi cards?

Maybe they use this information for marketing purposes to focus more on their ideal customers, who knows!

I have my mummy coming over to the US in the upcoming weeks so I needed to impress her by getting some awesome tickets. I thought maybe a Brooklyn Nets vs Chicago Bulls tickets would do the trick.

So I finished talking to the nice AMEX lady and went back into ticketmaster. I put in the 10 diget password and it worked! I was however coming to realize why the 'not so secret' password didn't have much enforcement behind it.

For my mummy, her partner, my girlfriend, and myself, it would of cost an eye-popping $7306.20 for some 2nd row seats! Needless to say that I rejected those tickets. If Bulls has the actual Space Jam crew with them, I still wouldn't book those seats for that price!

https://technicalconfessions.com/images/postimages/postimages/_150_9_fucking how much for basketball seats.png

For 4 people, there's a huge gap between the 'nose-bleeding-heaven' seats costing $88 and the 'I can smell the players sweat for $7306.20. I now came to realize that the privilege seats were solely focused on the high privileged seats for the super prices as appose to being in 'the AMEX club' and getting these seats for a deal.


Conclusion

So, even though the 'password' is more general knowledge, the prices supersedes the general public. Even if the the password was exposed to the public, I'm sure AMEX will not be heavily concerned with those prices.

About the author

Daniel is a Technical Manager with over 10 years of consulting expertise in the Identity and Access Management space.
Daniel has built from scratch this blog as well as technicalconfessions.com
Follow Daniel on twitter @nervouswiggles

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