Originally Posted by
Preacher7
I absolutely disagree. SPG is the one and only one place Canadians have it better.
As yall know, I'm a double dipper. And yes, you need an SSN and U.S. physical address to get a US credit file. I play the game big time both down here and north of the border.
Re: the SPG card, the referral is 10K, plus the bonus, that's 30K per hard pull. US is only 25K. So you're paying less than $100 US for 5K extra points. Not great, but better than you made it out to be.
But the real bonus is on the MR transfer rate: 1 to 2 v. 1 to 3. Canada wins. In fact, I believe that the key to aspirational travel for Canadians is via this method. Now that the Aeros to US/AA via points.com transfer option is dead, I believe transferring to SPG is the way to go, and that's what I'm doing with mine.
Plus, the Sheraton lounge access is only for Biz cards anyway.
My 2 cents. Or Starpoints.
All true but....MR accumulation suddenly got a lot worse in Canada now that we've moved to the 1x personal card per lifetime model. So transferring at 0.5:1 to SPG from MR isn't as easy to swallow anymore. For me, makes me look at my Aeroplan options a lot more closely. As that's where I can build critical mass of points.
I'm also worried that Amex SPG will have a lower earn rate at some point...because it's costing Amex more to buy those points from SPG.