Originally Posted by
JDiver
Just saw this today - and wanted to add one thing and clarify: the best card for someone who wishes to accumulate many AA miles would be... the Starwood AMEX card, as one can get a 25% bonus when exchanging Starwood points for AAdvantage miles (and of course, they still get the AA miles.)
Perhaps for many, but it depends on several factors including where you will use the card. The Starwood AMEX is an AMEX, which is not as widely accepted as a MasterCard (especially if a lot of your spending is either overseas or with certain types of small merchants who only take MC/Visa).
Also, if only a fraction of your miles come from credit card spend (say, because you can't put your rent/mortgage or many of your utilities on a card -- without paying astronomical fees -- and have no business expenses you can charge), the other benefits of another card may be of more value to you is it takes you quite a while to get to each 20k. In the case of the Citi AAdvantage, there are certain special discounted redemption rewards (if you're into redeeming for domestic coach seats). In the case of Diners Club, there is the ability to transfer to many hotel programs (especially useful, compared to SPG Amex, if a lot of your redemption stays are in smaller cities where SPG has a weaker presence than some other chains), plus the "universally primary" rental collision insurance (primary in the US, primary overseas, just plain primary, which most so-called "primary" rental coverages aren't).
OTOH, SPG Amex does have the lowest annual fee of the three (so in some cases that may be the deciding factor, even if you rarely get to 20k).
Originally Posted by
JDiver
(For me, I use the HHonors points a lot, so I like splitting my iDine "take" with 10 miles and 5 HH points per dollar.)
For me, it has nothing to do with what I use "a lot", and more to do with what value it has
at the value earned. I may use Priority Club points a lot when I visit NYC (15k per night just across the river, one PATH stop away from WTC) or Choice points in Europe, but that's only because I can earn those points iridiculously fast with some of their promos. But at the "creepy crawly" rate that I'd earn them from card use (or, for that matter, from hotel stays without any promos), they accumulate so slowly they're not worth very much.
Meanwhile, now that Scandic is dropping out of HHonors, I don't know what I'm going to do with my HH points (given that I'm not interested in week-long resort stays, and other than that Scandic used to be the only consistent easy-to-find "deal" for HH points that I knew of).