Should AMEX have to give retention bonuses? No, not at all. But this thread is about retention bonuses for the SPG card! Is it not??

All I am doing is providing a data point about how difficult it can be to get AMEX to grant bonus starpoints for retention and giving my opinion about how paltry the offers can be.

Having data points is great. Was your offer paltry compared to others with similar year to date spend on their SPG Amex?

I called before the fee posted. I told the phone rep if she gave me 100K points that I would take her on vacation with me. She laughed and then awarded me 3K without hesitation.

I sent an SM two days ago and received $45 AND 3,000 points. To me, that more than pays for itself!

I've had the card for <1 year and had ~$30k in spend. I also mentioned Citi and Chase in the message and that I was hesitant about the $65 card fee.

I also only put $300 in spend on the card this last month (unintentionally), so not sure if that played a role.

Good luck!

Sent a secure message, got 3000 points.

Sent a secure message and only received $25. I will probably cancel after paying final statement minus the annual fee.

Called last Friday about the $20 increase in annual fee and the CSR gave me 2,000 points for it. I told them that the usual is 3,000 and was given 3,000 for the annual retention bonus.

My points just showed up.

Anyone succeeded in having SPG AMEX fee refunded?
 

Hello everyone!

My SPG's annual fee hit this month (I opened the card last year). Currently Im not using the card, we are using our Cap1 Venture for every day purposes.
Tomorrow I will try to call and ask them to waive or reduce the fee. Has anyone had success with that as far as SPG goes?
Has anyone also cancelled that card? If you did, what did you do with the points? We have 80K or so points on it right now. Im thinking if I should cancel the card and transfer the points beforehand to the airline program. I understand that the card's the keeper, but for right now we're not flying all that much but once a year internationally, and cant justify paying too many annual fees....

Thanks so much!

Dunno about fee waiver or refund, but...

If the points have transferred from the Amex into your Starwood SPG account (typically a day or two after the bill closes), then those points are safe. You can close the credit card account and keep the SPG account open, and retain all the points.

Just make sure that you keep the SPG account active. Without a credit card, that requires a Starwood stay every 12 months.

Well, starwood stay is not something that's going to happen. When I go to see my parents in Germany, we stay with them and otherwise we dont travel anywhere....
Citi was pretty generous in waving my AA Card's fee after I make 5 purchases on the card. Im wodering if SPG does something close to that....

You would still have 12 months before your account is considered inactive and your starpoints would be lost.

You'll probably get better answers in the SPG forum. In fact, I think there's a specific thread on card cancellation concessions. When I cancelled mine they dropped the annual fee down to $5 before finally giving in and cancelling.

the fee has been billed?, if so, you may want to ask what happens if they don't waive/reduce the fee and you cancel....there's a chance that they will send a deadbeat nastygram to the credit agency[s]....

Many have, but if you've stopped using the card, don't expect too much.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/starw...amex-card.html