The people hurt by the devaulation are those who were "banking" their points for some way-in-the-future vacation (retirement?). I bet if you looked in the personal effects of some of these people, you would find some unredeemed books of S&H Green Stamps as well.

As for the promotions at HH, I found them a-plenty. In fact, it seems that HH was printing money with all of the promotional point offers so you should expect point inflation to occur.

As for those who earned status/points purely with the Amex card, well, those people earned HH a tidy little profit with no expense from HH so I would qualify those people as the best customers of all!