Originally Posted by
Ragnarok
I would value AMEX MR points at roughly 1.5 cents per point.
But really, think about your SPG calculations again.
Let' say you spend $16000 in buying a piece of jewelry. Using the SPG card, you pay $16435 total.
You get $245 back ( in the form of a free night), so your net cost for this piece of jewelry is $16435 - $16000 = $16190.
On the other hand, say you use a card that doesn't give any rewards at all, but also doesn't charge any conversion fee, your net cost for this piece of jewelry will than just be $16000.
Agreed?
That makes very good sense, I totally agree.
Also, are you sure that Discover cards don't have DCC problems? I was researching it and some DCC systems do work on Discover cards. I am pretty sure AMEX doesn't have the problem since I've done using that in China and it was problem-free.