Originally Posted by
sdsearch
FYI: I upgraded from the free Hilton Amex (which I'd had for years) to the Ascend early this year (once a big upgrade bonus offer showed online), and then roughly half a year later I got an online offer to upgrade form Ascend to Aspire for another 150k bonus points! So I'm getting the double the bonus points, while having "just Gold" for only about half a year, than if i"d upgraded to Aspire directly (which wasn't available at that time with a bonus).
Cool, that turned out well for you!
I had originally planned to serve out my earned Gold year and then apply for Ascend for "permanent" Gold, which is fine for my travel patterns (and I'd be following in your footsteps). But in recent days, I started considering Aspire, due to the $250 airline credit and free night weekend first year, which is easily worth $200-400 (I suppose you could squander it on a hotel less than $200, but only if you were running out of time or something).
My previous plan was to cancel my Marriott and Hilton cards and apply for new ones with a bonus, but balked at the credit check (I have frozen my credit due to the breaches going on, and didn't want to be bothered to unfreeze them). But just as you mention, these upgrades at the same credit level don't require a credit check! I already upgraded my Marriott Visa to Premier Plus two weeks ago.
So, I was mulling it over early this morning and went over to my Amex account and saw the Aspire upgrade offer for 150K points and pulled the trigger. Now I've bypassed Ascend and gone directly to Aspire. One main reason is that the $250 airline credit is calendar year, so I have a month to get that done and then in January I can do it again. That's $500 right there, which already pays for the AF on the Aspire card. Using the free night or other bennies is just Hilton/Amex paying me to use their card. And, I figure I can unfreeze my credit and apply for an Ascend card sometime in the future.