No, the SPG account lives on.

Sincerely,


William R. Sanders
Customer Service Coordinator
Starwood Preferred Services

[email protected]

I know I commented about this somewhere else...I think there are a couple of "Should I haggle the $30 fee?" threads. :)

My take is that negotiating the annual fee on a credit card is perfectly fair game. The fact that banks sometimes waive it when asked means that they do too. So I don't believe it's immoral or unethical to pursue the waiver. You will call and ask. They may accept, make a counteroffer, or say no and ask you whether you'd like to keep the account active. Normal business.

That said, I've never called on the SPG Amex. In the grand scheme of things - the incremental annual value I get from the card over the 2nd best credit card on the market - the $30 is a tiny fraction really not worth getting upset about. It is not worth the time and hassle of making phone calls, waiting on hold, getting transferred to the "retention department", playing the game, pretending I'm really chapped and ready to cancel, etc.

If you enjoy this kind of thing - and I know some people consider negotiating for stuff, even little stuff, a bit of a hobby - by all means go for it and don't sweat whether it's "right" or "wrong". If the banks felt it were wrong, they'd shut it down tomorrow and never waive an annual fee again.

I had them waive the fee for a couple of years. Average about 10k a month. Then we switched cards and used it for home. They offered to give us the Delta or Hilton card that have no fee, and they cancelled the SPG card just as fast.

FWIW, I called last month and simply asked if there was anything they could do about the annual fee. The rep put me on hold for a second, came back, and offered me a $25 credit on my card. I accepted. I have to admit, I was somewhat surprised. For reference, I have a couple other AMEX cards with annual fees (personal Plat and business Gold).

Best card I have ever had without doubt. Great service. Worth every penny.

Only glad they haven't RAISED the price.

SPG Referral bonus point offer
 

Yesterday, I recieved a mailing from AMEX/SPG offering a 5K point bonus for each referral to the SPG Amex card, aimed at getting me to ask friends and family to sign up. Its 5K points per referral, up to a max of 20,000 points. I believe the referral period ran till the end of January '07. Anyone else get this offer?

This came just in time as my wife was going to apply for her own card anyway. ^ This just made the deal sweeter, 10K points for her and now 5K for me. Thanks AMEX/SPG. :D

I don't have the mailing in front of me at the moment, but there were four detachable RSVP cards that you were to hand out, which needed to be filled out by the applicant and then mailed in. There were some specific referral and/or ID codes printed on each RSVP card. I'm not sure if you could do this online, but I'll check the mailing when I'm home later and let you know. In the mean-time, maybe somebody else got the same thing and knows for sure.

I called about a month ago and there was no referral offer then. :td:

Hopefully my brother didn't apply for his already.

Thanks for letting us know about the URL not working. American Express is addressing this issue and it should be up and running by midnight.

Sincerely,


William R. Sanders
Customer Service Coordinator
Starwood Preferred Services

[email protected]

It's actually
http://www.americanexpress.com/spgfriend
no S at the end

sent you a pm with the code, anyone else need the code, please pm me.

Note, it did state on the offer that the 10,000 first use is for first-time cardmembers only, please see americanexpress.com/spgfriends for t&c.

Looks like the Marketing Department is getting ahead of the IT. :confused:

sadly, thats often the case. Oh and then they go and blame THE CUSTOMERS for "not using the promotions as they had been intended" or something stupid like that. All i got was:

The page cannot be found
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please try the following:

If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.

Open the www.americanexpress.com home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
Click the Back button to try another link.
Click Search to look for information on the Internet.



HTTP 404 - File not found
Internet Explorer

It worked for me if spelled correctly

you need to put www.americanexpress.com/spgfriends