Raffles

The sign-up bonus for the Starwood Preferred Guest Amex card has been doubled from 10,000 points to 20,000 points for November! This is the highest that has ever been openly offered (SPG has targetted some members directly with a 25k offer recently.)

20k Starwood = 25,000 BA Miles, because of the 5k bonus you get for transferring 20k in one transaction. If you hold back the conversion in case BA reruns its occasional '25% bonus on hotel point conversions' promotion, you'd get an extra 25%, so 31,250 miles.

The direct link is here: www.amex.co.uk/wow although you should go via Quidco for £20 cashback. The annual fee is £75 (£55 after Quidco) - you would need to go through the T&C's to see if early closure gets you a partial refund. You need to spend £1,000 in the first 3 months to trigger the bonus.

And if you don't need BA Miles, you can also get 25,000 miles in pretty much every other airline scheme (not BMI) or indeed get some good value SPG hotel redemptions.

(This is the only useful thing I picked up this morning, when I 'took one for the team' and went to the Luxury Travel Show at Olympia. I have been before so knew it was a waste of space - it is organised by Conde Nast Traveller and is co-located with The Spirit of Christmas gift fair, so you can imagine the 50-ish matronly women it is targetted at! Don't look for Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental or any airlines plugging their J seats - they aren't there. Luckily I had a free ticket and live fairly close. The SPG Amex girls gave me a 'W'-themed CD, which was the only decent takeaway.)

Blueboys999

As you've noted here before, there are some very good redemption rates with high-end SPG hotels. I took the card out a few months ago intending to transfer to BA/AA but I'll probably forego that and use the points for some very attractive hotel offers.

BTW -SPG currently have a 20% discount on points purchases.

Jamjaw

Noting in T&Cs to say not open to people who have card before.... What are thoughs on this, I got it with their last offer, would I be able to get again?

Raffles

Obviously nothing to lose by applying. Personally, I won't be reapplying, but then I only cancelled mine 3 weeks ago

My wife may be keen though

Blueboys999

Tell her not to wait until 31 November because there are only 30 days in the month.

Jamjaw

Are you able to transfer points from spg account to spg account. Actually want this for the starwood points. Will have enough, combined with hilton from work, to get my next holiday free....

dpark74

I just read the T&Cs, and it seems there is no charge in the first year at all. The £75 applies from year 2. Did I understand that correctly? So it's a free card and you can just spend £1k, get the points and cancel?

Raffles

Those may be old T&C's from the previous promo (15k points and no fee for Year 1). The leaflet I got at the travel show clearly says there is a fee in Year 1 and that is reflected in the interest rate shown of 34.5%!

Blueboys999

I see that the US site says that there isn't fee in Year 1 and then it's $65 p.a. which looks a much better deal because you still get the points bonus.

I does look like the £75 is payable in Year 1 for UK applicants but it's still a decent deal because even with the current 20% discount, 20k points cost $560.

Roger

There was speculation in the AmEx forum that only two AmEx-issued cards per person were allowed. I thought this was rot at the time because I was using 4 AmEx-issued cards at one time (2 charge and 2 credit), though one had an unusable £700 limit so didn't last long.

I now have just two - the plat charge and the BA PP credit. I wonder if a third (the SPG credit) would be allowed. I'd hate to have a rejection show up on my credit reports!

Jamjaw

Fairly sure limt is two of each type... so you should be ok! And if they reject for poor reason, ask them to remove the search!

Raffles

I had a Plat charge, BA Amex credit and SPG Amex credit running over the Summer with no problems.

Blueboys999

deleted

Raffles

Yes there is, you need to search for American Express Starwood rather than American Express SPG.

Blueboys999

Thanks - you beat me to it Raffles - I misread it.