businesstraveler

I'm sure this has been covered, but is there a way to get AMEX points to a US Airline without the fee AMEX is charging? Such as transfering to a hotel program first, then to an airline?

Stefan Daystrom

Do the math! Yes, it's possible, but why in the world would you want to go through a 50%, 75%, or greater devluation in the value of your miles just to avoid paying a TINY TINY FRACTION of the cost of the value of the miles you get by transferring directly.

Does AMEX let you "pay" the transfer fee with more points? (Diners Club does, tho I would never do it, because once again the value of the extra points they allow you to "pay" the transfer fee with works out to WAY more expensive than just paying "cash" for the transfer. But if you really care about philosophy more than about the math of which is the better value, you can always do a transfer at Diners Club using points only.)

businesstraveler

AMEX automatically charges the fee to your card, at least for Gold Members.

Granted, its only a small fee (I think it works out to $10/25,000 points), but its the principal of the thing to me. Given the points are not worth that much to begin with, I'd prefer to not pay it if it can be done without hassle.

SemiElite

It especially rankles me that Amex has recently added this fee, on top of a $100 increase for Platinum card members. One would think that $400 per year should cover the costs of mileage transfers!

I recently shared these opinions with Amex, suggesting that I could get a UA or AA bank card for $75 that would not only give me fee-less miles, but also miles in a "real" airline like UA or AA, not some third-stringer airline with limited coverage.

The Amex rep said that a lot of members have expressed their displeasure, and that Amex was close to announcing that they would soon be waiving the transfer charges for Platinum and Centurion members. So, I'm now holding off any mileage transfers until this happens. And if it doesn't....well, there's always the UA bank card option.

Stefan Daystrom

Well, the only way to avoid it (in the future) AFAIK without losing even more in the process is to stop using an MR AMEX and switch to a hotel AMEX (the SPG Amex is by far the highest regarded for this). Not only do you not have to pay a fee to transfer from most hotel point programs into airline mile programs, but you have WAY more choices of airline to transfer to (except you lose Southwest). And with SPG Amex the earnings work out about the same (you still get 1 point per $ spent and you still get 1 mile per point, and while on the one hand you don't get the double points for everyday spending, on the other hand you get a 25% bonus points when tranferring 20k or more at a time). Oh, and the annual fee is $0 the first year and $30 after that.

However, the problem with transfering MR THROUGH SPG to an airline is made clear, after the above, when you find that 1000 MR points is only something like 333 SPG points. So you lose about 2/3 of your value by earning points on an MR AMEX and then transferring them to SPG (and then if you want to an airline FF program) than if you transfer MR AMEX (transfer fee and all) directly to airline miles.

Is principle worth 2/3 of your miles?

But if you hate the principle of the small transfer fee, why don't you hate the princple of $110+ annual fees?