Originally Posted by afang
i've decided just to use my Amex Starwood on everything, and use AA business on merchants who don't accept Amex, this certainly makes my wife's life a lot easier
Yeah, that's the way I'm leaning, too. If you do significant leisure travel, the Starwood points are extremely valuable. Hotel rooms can be very expensive, and the Starwood program is very customer friendly. And I find it often works great in a situation where priceline is unattractive.
A Starwood point is, without question, currently worth at least 2 cents, and you can often get much more value than that out of them. They're also a lot of fun to spend (I've used them in California and Florida resorts, and in luxury hotels in Asia and Europe). So to accept an alternative credit-card bribe, it has to be very lucrative. The 5% cash back from Citi was an offer too-good-to-refuse (and I limited my purchases to gas, groceries and drug stores, using AMEX everywhere else it was accepted).
I'm skeptical that anyone is going to still offer 5% cash, but you never know. And, of course, there's always a chance the SPG program or its credit card will also be devalued.