Culturally, it seems Australians are averse to the idea of a concierge service. Having someone perform a task which we ourselves are more than capable of performing has a faint odour of elitism. It's something Edwina Monsoon would do.

There is also a sense of redundancy. If we have to make a phone call to our concierge service to make dinner reservations or buy tickets to an event, why not just call the restaurant or ticket office ourselves?

Part of Australia's hesitation to use concierge services lies in the standard lines trotted out by banks to promote these services. It's always the same thing: make dinner reservations, book a hotel etc

But these examples do concierge services an injustice - they're capable of so much more.

Just ask Denise Thomas, the executive vice president at LesConcierges, who provide credit card concierge services to major card issuers and partners.

Her company has been asked to arrange flowers, birthday gifts, entire vacations - even an audience with the pope.

VIPDesk, another concierge company, has had requests for hanging Christmas lights on a house, finding food for a pet tarantula and locating a replica of the dress worn by Julia Roberts in Ocean's Eleven.

Then there are the more standard but little-publicised services. Many cardholders ring and ask for ideas for birthday gifts, check the status of flights, arrange for replacement travel documents such as passports and travellers cheques, get directions around a foreign city (particularly when they're lost) or obtain tickets/reservations they wouldn't ordinarily be able to get.

Mayn concierge services have a good relationship with popular restaurants. American Express has agreements with over 1,200 restaurants all over the world to reserve at least one table per night for its concierge service customers.

Admittedly, you could perform most of these services yourself, but as one cardholder put it: “If I call the airline, it takes me 10 minutes and 8 buttons to get through to a human being,” he said. “With these guys, you get through immediately.”

The concierge services are quick to point out they draw the line at anything illegal, immoral or unethical. "We don’t do escort services or anything of that nature,” said a spokesperson for VIPDesk.

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