[QUOTE=Bidkat]
Originally Posted by pinniped
Dang. Now I understand why FT'ers aren't drooling over this card. It's just like every other half-baked home-grown points card on the market: full of vaguely-described benefits, exclusions, restrictions, overnight changes, poor processes, poor definitions, and deteriorating value to the end user over time.QUOTE]
Yep.
Not only is the Starwood card a great value numbers-wise, but unlike the Merrill card's obstacle course of restrictions, Starwood essentially has none. In fact, you could argue that Starwood is undervalued when just comparing the numbers, because of the substantial intangible value that comes from the program's extreme flexibility (i.e., the ability to xfer to other programs at a competitive rate.
Starwood does have restrictions, as the ritz-certificate: standard room only. Last Oct. I tried to redeem rooms at both ritz and spg maui, ritz have availability till Dec23, spg is a little better, gave me avaiability till Dec24, both are not avaiable after Dec24. SPG is more flexible than ritz because it has more hotels and points can be transfered to airlines. No doubt SPG has the best affinity card program of all hotel chains except the dread Amex financial review, I got hit last year and I decided to close all my amex cards and never use them again.
I made 3 reservations at ritz, that's what I got based on my experience and chat with ritz-reservation: before you make reservation, check rate at ritz website, for the ritz-maui, , if it's $25X/night, then u can use your merrill+ certificate; for the ritz-VI, if rate is $35X, u r fine too.