<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by hauteboy:
It's not usually a good deal for normal miles.. but when AMEX has double mile promo, then that's worth paying the 'convenience' fee.</font>
Not necessarily.
On my property tax bill (also in San Francisco) of $2,118 annually (obviously, I bought a long time ago and Prop 13 has kept my assessed value artificially low), the convenience fee for paying by credit card would be $57. (I called to find this out!)
Even with the current Starwood American Express double points promo (on purchases over $500), this just does NOT seem like a good deal to me. That is about 1.35 cents per Starpoint. And the bonus points typically take a LONG time to post -- a couple months -- so doing this as a "quick" way of buying extra points doesn't entirely work either (only works for the base points, which will post at end of monthly billing cycle).
On the other hand, if the convenience fee were REALLY cheap, or the promo for MORE than double points/miles, I might do it.
Kathy