Hiya,

I recently moved to Hong Kong for work. I've noticed that the credit card programs here are fewer and far less generous than those in the US. I have a CX AMEX that gives 1 mile per 8 HKDs(~=1 USD) with 2x earning in the first 3 months and several (7?) thousand miles as a sign-up bonus. I recently applied for a SQ Visa that has a 5k mile sign-up bonus and 10x earn up to the first 2k miles (ordinary rate 10 HKDs or $1.30 USD/mi).

Compared to 50k miles and such commonly available in the US, these deals are crap, but there's not anything dramatically better out there.

My question is whether it's possible, practical and/or economic to get American credit cards (say, using my home address and having my parents mail them to me), spending the money locally (presumably paying applicable FX fees) to meet either the minimum spend or possibly on an ongoing basis (if they're that much better and/or the FX fees are low enough).

Further, I've been getting significant pushback when trying to use my AMEX lately and it's kind of annoying. One travel agency charged me 2.5% over cash price for using it to buy a ticket (was still cheaper than the rates other agencies quoted me for the same ticket). My gym just tried to tell me that they don't take AMEX when I upgraded my contract, but they've been taking my AMEX on autopay for months. I'm under the impression that surcharges are illegal under the AMEX merchant contract, and they probably don't smile upon their cardholders being pushed around by merchants, either. Does anyone have experience with this sort of thing? Is there a complaint hotline/webform/email address? Does it do any good?