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FYI, I had applied and spent 15K since i gotten it a few weeks ago and Both the 10,000 1rst purchase AND 15,000 bonus points posted today to my spg account. Yesterday was my cut-off date for billing cycle. I am going to cancel this after I pay off the card.

Credit Card Retention Bonus
 

Annual $45 fee is due and I called to cancel and was offered $15 off or 1000 SPG. I took the points. The CRS told me the retention bonus is based on your amount of usage, so don't be shy.

I hardly ever use my personal SPG Amex and concentrate on the Business one.

I wonder what someone who charges a couple hundred thousand per year could reasonably expect to be offered as a retention bonus?

While you usually have to talk to the people that close the accounts (not the regular CSRs) You could probably expect to get either $35 or the whole $45 waived based on that spending. YMMV.

Earn double Starpoints on (SELECTED) Starwood stays??
 

I stayed at three SPG properties last month: 4PTs Shanghai Daning, 4PTs Shanghai Pudong, and Le Royal Meridien Shanghai. Just received my AMEX statement, only bonus points I got was from the 4PTs Pudong stay. Called AMEX and was told one can only earn bonus points at SELECTED SPG hotels. I then looked up the AMEX website, it only says:
Has anyone encountered the same problem before?

Your AMEX rep needs (as our William likes to say) retraining. The problem is that the many foreign properties aren't coded properly for Amex to know it is a Starwood. You'll need to get a supervisor on the line if the next rep doesn't realize the issue.

In the T&Cs you cite, the "select" refers to retail outlets. It is all hotel stays.

Not sure it's really worth the time and hassle to threaten to cancel a card to save a mere $15. Unless you're unemployed and your time is worth nothing, anyway. :D

AMEX fee refund luck?
 

I just called AMEX today to ask them to waive the $45 membership fee, but encountered resistance (and a very "slow" rep). My reasoning for them to waive the fee was that I had spent over $30K on my card, but was already a Gold member and didn't see any extra benefit.

They said it was against their policy. Anyone have luck using a different tactic (other than the cancellation threat)?

Um, isn't the "extra benefit" that you earn Starpoints?

That's how I see it, and I'm SPG Gold for life, and an SPG Platinum the last few years.

Double Starpoints on Starwood Stays with SPG AmEx
 

I just had a Cash and Points stay at the Sheraton Cable Beach in Nassau, Bahamas. I charged the cash portion (plus some incidentals) to my SPG AmEx. The Sheraton became a Sheraton earlier this year, 2007.

I just looked at my current charges at the American Express website, and I was charged (correctly) the amount on my AmEx card. Unfortunately, the charge was to "Radisson Cable Beach." From reading other posts in the long thread, double points won't be automatically forthcoming from AmEx. The account doesn't close until early next month (January 2008).

Assuming that I won't automatically be given the double points, what is the best way to get my double points for the charge?

It's probably not worth the hassle unless you had a large amount of incidentals on your C&P stay. I'd say for less than 1k SPG pts its not worth the hassle to make the multiple calls something like this would require (not to mention that you'd hafta keep track of it for several months to make sure the extra points post).

Call AMEX. The regular agents are authorized to credit up to 1,000 points themselves. It sounds like you will be owed lass than that. Just explain you are due double points for the charges at the Starwood property but it seems to still be coded as a Radisson and your points thus did not post. Then simply ask if he/she would be so kind as to post the points. *if* the agent knows at all what you are talking about (which is hit or miss) it should go smoothly.

That's a big "*if*" :)

I guess I'm a high value customer. The rep just offered me 5,000 points to keep the card.