American Express Membership Rewards - Where to transfer 100k AmEx Reward Points?

I never use my Gold AmEx card but have kept it as to not lose my 100,000 Rewards points I have "parked" there. I find that I prefer to use my Starwood AmEx card and have more airline options.

I have no idea what to do with these points? I had planned to transfer them to Quantas to use for an upgrade to business class for a trip to Australia but this is not possible. The airlines I fly most often are AA and UAL so this too is not an option.

Should I transfer them to Starwood Acct? I also have a Marriott, Priority Club and Hilton Honors accout should I transfer them into a hotel program. I want the best conversion rates.

OR should I consider getting an AmEx Platinum Account (the one that cost around $300 per year) as I hear you can get shipboard credits on cruise ships and good perks like 2 for1 business class tickets when this is used. I really am at a loss but I need to do something and am getting sick of paying $150 per year for nothing. Thanks for any suggestions.

Stay away from putting them in Starwood - you lose far too many points by doing so.

Why not just put them in to Continental? You can then use the points for Delta, Northwest, CO and others. Or two for one in to Hilton (which you can't do with Delta anymore).

And if you actually buy full fare business class tickets then yes, the Platinum card would be well worth it. Otherwise stick with the Starwood Optima card.

This is not something I personally know about, but it's been mentioned here before: to "park" MR points, get a free Blue card and transfer them to an MRO account. MRO points are half as valuable, so when you plan to use them you need to transfer them back to an MR account. There's a transaction fee both ways, it's said.

Or just have your points issued as Southwest coupons and sell them on ebay. Your net is a bit over a penny a point.

If you are not in too much of a hurry you might want to wait to see if MR has a promo again that provide bonus points for transferring of MR points. There have been a few over the past year.

You can move 25k of your MR points each year into UA by transferring them into CO, then transferring 1:1 into Amtrak, and then transferring 1:1 into United. I just did that myself, taking ~ 15 days for the whole thing from start to finish.

If you have patience, then, you could move 50k into CO now, and then get 25k UA points right away and them 25k more in January.

If you want to book UA awards, you can transfer your points to MX or ANA or US. But since US hasn't published it's Star Alliance award chart yet, I'd be careful -- my own hunch is that it won't be overly generous.

Amex often runs bonuses for transfers into CO and DL, so you might want to wait for a transfer bonus...

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View from the Wing (http://www.webflyer.com/blog): A blog about Free Miles and Free Markets

Has anyone on this board actually parked a large amount of points in a blue account at 1/2 value and moved them back to a regular Membership rewards account to get "full value"?

mlm,

It looks like you do not have enough points to do this one (you'll need 165k in Marriott), but here goes:

1. Xfer enough Amex to Marriott for 165k points balance.
2. With the 165k points, Get Marriott award code (084?) which allows you to get one 7 day certificate at a category 5 Marriott hotel, allows you to transfer 50k points into 50k miles at American Airlines or United (and some others) and a 25% Hertz discount and a 100 minute ATT phone card.

The most important part is the 1-1 points for miles.

165,000 Marriott rewards points get you one Orient Express ticket from Venice to London!

Why not just put them into a US Air account and then use the miles on United. The last couple of transfers I did to US Air took less then a day.

[This message has been edited by jc1K (edited 07-20-2003).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by jc1K:
Why not just put them into a US Air account and then use the miles on United. The last couple of transfers I did to US Air took less then a day.</font>

Agreed. This is probably the most useful and flexible solution for you, if you fly UA a lot. If you do the transfer online, they post in your US account immediately. Finally, Amex has figured out how to do this linkup seamlessly.

Transfer them to Delta there is a 15% Bonus for transfers completed by August 15, 2003. PLEASE REGISTER FIRST AT DELTA.COM to receive the bonus.

Can anyone comment on transfering miles from Amex to US and then redeeming for travel on United. Looking at trying to get two First class awards down to Australia by way of United while using US miles from Amex MR

can anyone point me to where the transfer ratio's are for MR to airline miles....can't seem to find them for the various airlines/hotels....

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Pacha:
can anyone point me to where the transfer ratio's are for MR to airline miles....can't seem to find them for the various airlines/hotels....</font>

Are you referring to this link?:
http://www48.americanexpress.com/en/docs?request_type=un_staticpage&linkid=1

Phoenixitc thanks,
it has to be there somewhere in the neighborhood, but what I'm looking for is a page that would tell me that I can transfer 3MR points to one starwood point, or MR to CO at one to one?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Pacha:
Phoenixitc thanks,
it has to be there somewhere in the neighborhood, but what I'm looking for is a page that would tell me that I can transfer 3MR points to one starwood point, or MR to CO at one to one?</font>

OIC...
I haven't found a specific page that list all ratios but I found that if you initiate a transfer, the page that appears after clicking on TRANSFER NOW, you'll see in yellow a transfer statement, ex. 1,000 MR = 1,000 CO.

many thanks

Can anyone comment on transfering miles from Amex to US and then redeeming for travel on United. Looking at trying to get two First class awards down to Australia by way of United while using US miles from Amex MR

jnwind,
I recently transferred some AMEX points into my USAIR mileage to top off for 2 domestics from BOS-SFO. This took one day. Then called USAIR to book the reward tix. The USAIR flight times were not good for me, so I asked them to check UNITED flights. Lo and behold, I acquired two non-stops on UNITED to SFO (at my requred times). The whole process was seemless for me.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by goldarm:
I recently transferred some AMEX points into my USAIR mileage to top off for 2 domestics from BOS-SFO. This took one day. </font>

As travelmad mentioned above (to make sure to give credit where credit is due), USAirways transfers should be instantaneous (they have been for at least the past year in my experience).

Can anyone comment on transfering miles from Amex to US and then redeeming for travel on United. Looking at trying to get two First class awards down to Australia by way of United while using US miles from Amex MR

I usually do this via Mexicana a member of Star Alliance. Create a Mexicana FF Account, call them and make a reservation on United, confirm with Mexicana your flight & seat, then transfer the Miles fron Amex and in a couple of days the transfer is complete. Finally issue the ticket with Mexicana on United. Last week I issued a Business Class Amex reward transfer (40K) from LAX-JFK-LAX for Nov'2003.

thx gleff it's a little crazy to transfer so many places but it works!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by gleff:
You can move 25k of your MR points each year into UA by transferring them into CO, then transferring 1:1 into Amtrak, and then transferring 1:1 into United. I just did that myself, taking ~ 15 days for the whole thing from start to finish.

If you have patience, then, you could move 50k into CO now, and then get 25k UA points right away and them 25k more in January.

If you want to book UA awards, you can transfer your points to MX or ANA or US. But since US hasn't published it's Star Alliance award chart yet, I'd be careful -- my own hunch is that it won't be overly generous.

Amex often runs bonuses for transfers into CO and DL, so you might want to wait for a transfer bonus...

</font>

To ease your pain a bit you could get a "Blue" AmEx card without an annual fee. Then pay the yearly $40 fee to belong to Membership Rewards and cancel your $150 card. This will give you the luxury of time and save $110 per year.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mlm:
I had planned to transfer them to Quantas to use for an upgrade to business class for a trip to Australia but this is not possible. </font>

Both CO and US offer a free QF r/t Biz class ticket USA-OZ for 90,000 miles if that would work for you.

If you don't have an MX account, you get 4000 comp miles for opening one. Then you can put 96,000 AMEX points into MX and the extra 4,000 elsewhere. The MX points can be used for *alliance flights.