Originally Posted by
slawecki
i have a lot of miles on starwood amex. they are great because they do not get orphaned and they transfer to most airlines. i decided starwood hotels were not worth the miles, and stopped stayijng at starwoods on points. i have all these miles on DL, and dl does not really fly out of dc any more. i had a ton of miles on swiss. they just dissapeared, with my miles. i had a lot of miles on amtrak, but they went bad if i did not ride yearly. when i sold my company, i no longer traveled dc-ny. noplace to burn or transfer amtrak miles.
Amtrak miles expire unless you use Amtrak or you hold the (no annual fee) Amtrak MC from Chase. I do the latter, since I rarely ride Amtrak. Not sure what I'll use it for, but it probably won't be from my home town, but when I fly to somewhere where it then makes sense to use rail onwards. (But who knows what year that will be! Which is why I just let my Amtrak points sit and slowly build with occasional light use of that card.)
Starwood polints transfer to a lot of airlines, but to UA they transfer at a horrid rate (1/2 the rate of all other ailrines), so it's funny you should mention this card after talking about how much you like the UA business class flat seats!
Starwood redemptions are often the best value with cash+points, but of course that only works at some hotels. I find in some locaitons I can't use them at all, but in some other locations (especially away from
big cities) they are much better value than other points I have. Especially useful when they have a resort somewhere I want to go where every other hotel is independent (can't use points) and all the hotels are expensive on cash. (Iguazu Falls, Argentina, is example #1 there.)