golfmad

I have both US and UK Amex cards and MR with both. What info are you looking for?

PanGalactic

Differences in exchange rates for UK/US MR points to other programs please

golfmad

OK, here's some from the US membership rewards website. I only ever transfer to BA so have never used the others:

Hilton: 1,500 Hilton points = 1,000 MR points
BA: 1,300 Avios = 1,000 MR (includes 30% bonus to end January, normally 1,000)
Iberia: 1,000 Avios = 1,000 MR
Virgin: 1,000 Flying Club Miles = 1,000 MR points
SPG: 333 Starpoints = 1,000 MR points

There are loads more. If you want to pick a vendor I'll be happy to look up the exchange rate info.

Here's a list of airline partners:



And here's a list of hotel partners:

PanGalactic

Jumeirah, Priority Club and Beardiemiles are of interest to me also.

Thanks

mottel1

anyone know more about this?

d3vski

Just got rid of the Gold card after transferring the MR points to BA.

They offered me double points for next 3 months and tried to highlight the card benefits to get me to keep the card.

I personally don't think its worth it, I would rather save the £125 and shoot for the 2-4-1 voucher on my BA amex PP instead.

Raffles

Here you go.

For you and anyone else interested in this, you should take a look at the $ IDC MR award options here:

https://global.americanexpress.com/m...yId=9&pageNo=1

The obvious points are:

1. Some airline schemes (BA, VS, SAS, Singapore, Delta) offer substantial better value via IDC as they are 1:1 in both and so you get 55% bonus miles, assuming £1=$1.55, even without a transfer bonus
2. All of the hotel programmes and Flying Blue and Iberia are marginally better via IDC, but most would be worse if the $ rate dropped below £1=$1.50
3. BMI is substantially worse via IDC (2:1 v 1:1)
4. IDC has a couple of programmes n/a to UK MR holders (Malaysia, Cathay Pacific)

The deal is very simple:

1. You open a $ IDC Amex card. This is a very painful process, please note, which requires bank references amongst other things. There is a refer-a-friend promo going on which gets the fee reduced and which gets you 5,000 MR points for joining.
2. You ring Membership Rewards and get them to transfer the balance from your UK Amex card to your $ IDC Membership Rewards account. Your points balance will be multiplied by the current exchange rate to the $, so x1.55 today. YOU CAN ONLY DO THIS ONCE A YEAR.
3. You redeem your MR points from your $ IDC MR account as usual, except you now have 55% more points to play with. As I noted above, most conversion rates are WORSE so the benefit is much reduced, except for BA and Virgin and the other airlines noted above which remain 1:1 in both schemes so you get 55% more miles.

golfmad

Priority Club is 1,000 points for 1,000 MR points
Jumeirah is 100 sirius points for 2,300 MR points
Beardiemiles is as listed in the earlier post

Hope that helps.

As has been said by others, where the number of MR points is that same as the UK exchange (e.g. BA) the US card is better because points are earned for considerably less spend.

Scots_Al

Evening all.

Just got myself a shiny new PP card, which I obviously intend to put as much routine spend on as possible.

Question - in certain months (such as this one), where I will have a particularly large spend, I'd prefer to pay it off every 10 days or so, just to make absolutely sure it's covered... other than obvious opportunity cost to me of not being able to do anything else with the funds at the time, are there any negative consequences to this? Specifically - I assume it doesn't screw with BA miles earning?

Thanks

Raffles

No, doesn't impact anything and you can easily make the payment on the Amex website

Scots_Al

Grand, thanks Raffles.

Ragman

Not a problem in my experience. I have done this sometimes when getting close to the spend limit. You still get the miles and you get closer to you companion ticket

Scots_Al

Yes - that is the other consideration... had my card 2 days now, and already half way towards limit! Although to be fair, I deliberately timed my application to get the card just in time for this period of anticipated spending/

Thanks again.

stevie-d

From memory, when my wife got her own BA Amex PP card, with a relatively low limit we could not pay early in the first month.

I think you have to wait until the statement date, but in subsequent months you can pay early.

We were caught out this way trying to book multiple BA flights over a short period to trigger the 241.

dmahon

The website doesn't like you paying more than your previous bill.

If your last monthly bill was £500, even if you have spent £2,000 so far this month, it won't let you pay more than £500, which is a bit of a pain. In the first month, before you have a bill, you can't pay anything at all. You can still send the money via bank transfer though. Not sure if you can make multiple smaller payments as well.