agreed. with all the recent CC bonuses (AA/Citi), i've been working on those anyway. plus SPG doesnt give crap to golds. if they dont give me any points to stay on for another year or reduce the fee, i'm gone and going with hilton surpass more than likely

Okay, I've read most of the 1,000+ posts in this thread and still can't answer the following question (perhaps someone else can):

If someone crosses the $30,000 spend threshold for 2010 in late December, after their December statement date, when will their Gold status expire?

February 2013, because the spend won't be reported (and status won't commence) until January 2011, or February 2012 because the computers will recognise that the status was earned in 2010?

Thanks in advance.

Gold status is earned for the year following the $30K in spend. I spent $30K in 2009 and am currently Gold as a result.

As to your hypo, it doesn't matter whether you hit the $30K threshhold in your December statement or January 2011 statement, provided the actual transaction(s) occur in calendar year 2010. The benefit will be the same: status for 2011, spilling over briefly into 2012.

Thanks for the quick and helpful response. I'd have preferred the other answer, but was rather expecting this one. ;)

I just called to cancel mine. The annual fee did it. Others have quite attractive benefits without the fee.

not worth to keep

I have the Surpass and SPG....While I agree with the above, i find the problem is that you have to charge a lot more on the Surpass for a free room. In general (i'd say 75% of the time) most free spg nights i book are 10k points, and most hilton nights i book are 40k points.
SPG = 1 points/dollar spend = 10k dollars spend for 1 free night
hilton = 3 point/dollar spend = 13,333.00 dollars spend for 1 free night

Have to spend about 33% more per free room. Granted, surpass does give double points for gas/groceries, but this is very minimal spending for me. So, i keep both, but put the bulk of my charges on the spg. If I could a free room for 10k spend on the hilton card, switching would be a no brainer.
Just my 2 cents.

Which answer? The correct one, or the one you wanted to hear?

I just want to chime in on this. As you mentioned, Surpass gives you 3 additional points for gas, grocery, pharmacy, cable/phone bills. That also includes and gift cards you by in a pharmacy or a grocery store, so if you plan to shop at Best Buy or have a dinner at some chain restaurant, buy the gift card there first, use your Surpass.

My strategy has been, put all of that spending on Surpass and get 6 points per dollar, then put the rest of my spending on SPG. This way you optimize your spending between these two cards. Just an idea, I am sure there are plenty of folks out there that do this as well.

Best,

PedroNY

Any word yet on these new "benefits"?

That should be $13,333 spend. (The rest of your analysis assumes this, but just to clear up any possible confusion...)

oops, good catch. typo on my part. i'll fix it in the original post.

How long does it take for the 30K bonus to post?
 

On the average, how long has SPG been taking to post the 30K pts sign up bonus after the required spend has been met?

- Same here. Bye-bye SPG AMEX and welcome AA Citicard with 100K bonus points!

Wish SPG had Plat Amex cards
 

We are Gold SPG elite due to being owners and are gold due the amount we spend on SPG amex. Seems like we should be able to stack these rewards to Plat. Any ideas?