20,000 pts. is not unheard of for high spenders. But not indefinitely as they keep excellent client histories.

I have heard on good authority that those days may be numbered. Oh well, it was good while it lasted I suppose.

Have had the card for two or three years, mostly light spending. No retention offer today. Will probably just cancel. There's so many other good cards out there right now that this one rarely gets my spend.

Just decided I am going to cancel my SPG card (or downgrade it to keep the credit). AMEX really doesn't seem to waive the fees on this card for average spenders. It's a good card, but I'm working on spend on so many others that it doesn't make sense to keep the SPG AMEX. Plus AMEX Membership Rewards cards (opposed to the SPG) often times have great transfer bonuses and special promotions to earn even more MR points as well.

Downgrade / retention phone # questions
 

My annual fee posted on my current statement. I called Amex CS and followed the prompts for "Cancel a card". I spoke to the person who answered (not sure if this was someone in the "retention department" or a regular CSR) about possibly downgrading or cancelling due to the annual fee. I would be happy to keep the SPG card if they gave me a statement credit covering at least part of the AF or some points, but for my situation, this card is not worth a $65 AF. The CSR did not offer me anything in terms of a statement credit or points.

Is there a direct phone number for the retention department? I was considering making one attempt to ask for a retention offer without raising the downgrade option at the beginning of the discussion.


Assuming I won't get a retention offer, I'm leaning towards downgrading to one of the Amex Blue products because I'm about to refinance my mortgage and don't want any unnecessary changes in my credit score or report.

I was hoping someone who downgraded recently could answer a few questions:

1) Is it correct (CSR told me this) that a downgrade to one of the no AF "Blue" cards will not result in a credit pull or a change in my card number?

2) If I wanted to apply for the SPG Amex again two years after cancelling it, would having the "Blue" card with the same card number make it less likely that I would get a bonus if I applied for a new SPG personal card?

Thanks for any feedback!

One more datapoint
 

Annual fee of $65 posted a couple weeks ago. Called today and asked for the fee to be waived. Agent said no one was authorized to do that but he could give me 3000 points. I took it!
I also got 3000 points when I called last year so definitely call and ask even if you were awarded points last year.

Put over $200K on my card last year. Spoke with the acct retention dept about waiving the fee. The rep kept saying that I was "one of their best accounts" and wanted to ensure I was completely satisfied. He said they don't waive fees, but could offer either a $50 statement credit or 7K points. I took the points after he reconfirmed that I "would be keeping my card." :)

No luck. Called to cancel and asked about retention bonus. Neither fee waiver nor points available. Downgraded to Blue. Spending in past 12 months about $5k. Used to spend a lot more in the past but now use the Chase Sapphire and Cap One Venture as my main cards.

Situation exactly the same here. I do stay a lot with Starwood, but nearly always outside of the US, where I never use the Starwood AMEX card due to the foreign exchange fee. Then there's the fact that it is an AMEX card, making it unacceptable to lots of merchants both inside and outside of the US. So Chase Sapphire and Cap One get nearly all of my charges these days. There seems to be no point in keeping the Starwood AMEX anymore despite my stays with Starwood.

I'm in a similar situation and decided to just cancel the card. Emailed their customer service and got it done immediately (and did not receive any special retention offer, though I wasn't really expecting one).

Most of my spending now goes onto the MR Rewards card (chase) or the free Hilton card. I stay a good deal in both of those chains as well, and both seem to be a better deal for my purposes anyway.

Moved to AMEX blue
 

I called and told the CSR I was "thinking about cancelling" and he offered me a $10 SC or I could migrate to another card. I chose to migrate to AMEX blue as my wife has a SPG AMEX as well (transferred all my SPG points to her account after I got off the phone). Spend last year was probably around 15-20k.

Was there a reason for transferring your points? You do not need to have an SPG AMEX to have points in the SPG program. They do accept other cards.

It does seem the offers are all over the board. So it's up to the CSR to see what they can get away with offering. :(

Mine renewed last April. I will probably call to cancel in march. I live in london now and i have the much less valuable UK SPG Amex card for UK transactions and Chase Sapphire for my USD needs.

Was offered 2K SPG points to keep the card and I thought it was too low ... went ahead and canceled despite of the rep's warning that the initial bonus of 25K SPG points is a one time deal!

The rep is completely wrong, of course.

This is very similar to my experience this morning except that the agent did not offer any points until I asked for them.

On a somewhat related note: I'd recommend verifying SPG's points activity against any recent Amex statement. Mine was about 2k points light when they appeared this morning. I called Amex to see if they transferred the proper amount and was told there was a processing glitch but they could correct it. Last month my "Starwood Spend" bonus was 1,978 points and this month that was the exact difference between what my actual Amex Base spend was and what appeared in the Activity in my SPG account.