Originally Posted by
Raffles
To say that the AA card is 8 times more generous than than the UK one because you get the bonus after spending $250 v £1000 is very disengenuous, quite frankly.
There is a target you are missing. The earnings rate on many UK cards is lower than US cards - take a look at the Hilton or Priority Club cards, for example, and see how many points you get for spending £1k / $2000. The US cards always come out better.
You're right, but actually then it just make my point even stronger -- the US cards are *even* more generous than I had illustrated.
In fact -- if it were to be reasonably equal, we should get more than 1mile/£ in the UK to make things closer to the 1mile/$ rate, but that doesn't happen either.
Note also, though, that most UK credit cards have no fee, unlike most US cards. Those free miles need to be paid for somehow!
The US Citibank AA card has a fee of $85 that is waived for the first year. The UK AA Citibank card has a fee of £25 that is waived for the first year. That still means you normally would get 20k miles for $85 and 5k miles for £25 (=$50). People still pay in the UK for the miles, it's just a much less generous mile/currency unit value.
I doubt whether people would mind paying a fee (I wouldn't) if they felt they were getting something more generous in return.
I would also be surprised if there was any US card that was as generous as the BMI card opening bonus. 20,000 BMI miles is enough for one-way business class flight to the US (with a small co-pay) - is there a US card (especially one with no fee!) that would give you a J one-way flight to Europe as a sign-up bonus?
That small copay on BMI is about the same cost as an economy class ticket. If you want to make the comparison, it would have been to the situation of AA a few years ago when there was no co-pay involved, and one could pay eg. the equivalent of £250 for the economy round trip and then redeem 25k miles for a one way upgrade to J from coach. (Now, of course, one has to pay the $250 each way on top of that, unless you buy an expensive Y-class or B-class fare at the start.)