Originally Posted by
vincewy
Another data point.
Instead of upgrade, I first signed up Aspire with 150K bonus by checking referral offers here (many members would love to send you referrals). As soon as I hit the spend, I upgraded my no-fee HH card with upgrade offer link within my account for another 150K. As of today, got both bonuses.
Hotel points from AmEx (I also experience the same with Bonvoy) tend to show up merely days once you meet the spending threshold, unlike MR points which usually take at least a full statement period.
Although my upgrade offer to Aspire is gone, I'm sure those links will come back.
You'd absorb 2 separate $450 AFs in exchange for the 300k HH points? Do you PC after year 1 on both cards or are you always maintaining 1 Aspire to maintain benefits?
Originally Posted by
sdsearch
Definitely if you start out with the no-AF HH card (and have nothing "higher" HH yet), it's possible to first upgrade to Ascend and later upgrade from Ascend to Aspire, getting both upgrade bonuses.
Anything else (like getting the Aspire first) is hard to know for now. See, the Aspire has only been available for a bit over year, and meanwhile Amex has been changing policies lately, so datapoints from the Surpass days are not necessarily valid any more. So datapoints of what you're asking about are likely to be extremely rare and/or too old to necessarily still be valid.
Does this include business cards by Hilton? In your scenario, I already have an HH biz card. With your approach (getting no AF personal HH and then upgrade from there), I'm guessing it still works?