Originally Posted by
ORD-TGU
I am interested in applying for the first time for the SPG AMEX. The current offer I see is the - "Earn up to 25,000 Starpoints:
Receive 10,000 Starpoints after your first purchase and an additional 15,000 Starpoints when you spend $15,000 in 6 months" My main purpose is to take advantage of the bonus conversion to American Airlines Miles. $15,000 in 6 months will be a little hard to do, but not impossible.
I signed up for the 25K offer about 8 months ago (got the card a day before the 30K offer hit the street).
I have done very well from the card and It is now myfirst choice card.
I made the $15 K spend just under the wire. Not because I did not have the required throughput on my credit cards, rather because:
(1) Many of the places that I make purchases will not accept AMEX
(2) I had several occasions when I could put large purchases on a card and AMEX rejected them because they were larger than my credit limit (I even phoned up and tried to deposite the requisite amout of cash as a prepayment and was told that I could not do that).
So some advice:
If you know what purchases etc you would use to make the $15K spend then make some phone calls and determine if they accept AMEX. If you fly on AA, then AA.com purchase of air tickets definitely qualifies. That was a big one for me.
If you get a low credit limit (and this sems endemic with new SPG AMEX cards....I have a great credit score, only mortgage debt, high income but still got a credit limit that was 15 to 20% of my VISA and Mastercard) you cannot increase in first 3 months. After three months I was able to get an instant increase equal to my existing credit limit. Prior to that what I did was pay of the balance during the billing period so I could spend beyond my credit limit over the month. If I hadn't done this I could not have reached my $15 K goal as my spends on AMEX were very uneven across the 6 months.