I've found a very interesting promotion which upgrades your Starwood membership status to Gold instantly -- well, maybe, maybe not, I'm not quite sure at this time yet.
Here's the story:
On Yahoo! Japan Auction I found several offerings that SELL the method at about $8, to instantly upgrade your Starwood membership status to Gold for nothing other than just two toll-free phone calls. Though I was very interested in it, I didn't want to pay for it
Instead I searched web for more information about it, and finally I belived I found one. (If you don't mind reading Japanese, here's the actual page: Nov 19 of
http://www.alpha-net.ne.jp/users2/ra...ako2000312.htm )
It reads:
There's a promotion for JAL Card members which will give 5,000 bonus miles for two qualified stays by the end of Feb at any Starwood group. In order to sign up this promotion one has to give Starwood mustomer service the promotion code "WK". When you you present this code, your status will automatically be upgraded to Gold. Finally I've got Gold without staying Starwood.
JAL Card is a co-branded credit card combined with JAL's mileage program (named Jal Mileage Bank, or JMB in short). It requires annual fee and is I guess only available for Japanese residents. But the auction item was clearly saying there's totally no payment, so that I guessed just having JMB account is sufficient for the offer.
Since I already had JMB account, I just signed up for SPG and called SPG member service, told the rep I want to sign up the offer, gave him the promotion code and my JMB account number.
Can someone confirm about this offer?
I've just done it about 30 min ago, and so far nothing has changed in my account info I can see on the web. I'll also call SPG member service in Japan to make sure later.
I'll keep you informed...