<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by gleff:
The Starwood American Express:
up to 10k bonus points in the first year, including 4k with first use
earn Starwood hotel points (W/St Regis/Sheraton/Westin) which can be used for hotel stays or converted 1:1 into miles with most airline programs
convert 20,000 points and get 5,000 bonus points -- which mean you actually earn 1.25 miles per dollar on all purchases instead of 1 mile per dollar
free the first year, $30 thereafter
converts 1:2 into qantas and air new zealand!
You can also see my blog post on credit card miles.</font>
Actually I just signed up for this card. Free the first year, 4k pts, everyone raving about it, I had to try. Based on the above conversions, that means that converting 20k into Qantas would give you either 45k or 50k miles depending on how the math was done (I am sure someone here knows how they do it). This seems to be the best value - and with Qantas being in OneWorld, that means you can get AA or BA flights also. Has anyone had experience with this? I think this was the basis for the IF-Concorde scheme. If you look at the chart here:
http://www.qantas.com.au/fflyer/dyn/...ables#qf_ba_aa
... it seems that you can get some good deals mileage-wise. Like 30k QF miles for a roundtrip in the US, which would cost you only 15k Starpoints (even better rate if you convert them in 20k increments) instead of the usual 25k miles on most carriers. Europe for 50k QF miles that only costed you (I guess) 20k starpoints. This seems like a stellar deal, am I missing something, is there a catch, or is it really that good?