Originally Posted by pinniped
I use SPG Amex as my primary and my credit union's debit card as my backup while abroad.
I figure I'm still coming out a smidge ahead buying Starpoints for 2 cents, and my credit union debit card doesn't seem to pass through any charges that I can tell (vs. that day's interbank rates). I also get three free ATM hits per month worldwide with the debit card, which is plenty unless I'm hitting a lot of different countries.
Actually, you're buying SPG points at 3 cents. If you used the Capitol One 1% cashback card, you're in effect gaining an additional 1% of charges on top of the no conversion fee. However, I can also see not wanting to have yet another credit card to keep track of.
I guess I'm also leery of using AMEX for foreign transactions given the class action lawsuit (from which I got all of 3 cents). For some countries, they apparently had terrible conversions, and I don't want to waste the time calling up customer service to dispute the conversion rate. In this case, I think the class action lawsuit settlement probably had the opposite effect of what AMEX hoped for--I'm now very unlikely to use them for overseas transactions except under special circumstances.