"GOTCHA"

Great use of miles! You'll love it...

I know this is just the case in general, but it really bugs me how screwed we Canadians get on the SPG Amex

Signup Bonus:

Canada - 20k
USA - 25

okay, that difference isn't too big...

Annual Fee:
Canada - 120.-, no FYF
USA - FYF, then 65.- (84CAD)

... okay, pay more but get less.... why?

Starpoints earned:
Canada - 1 for everything
USA - 2 for stays, 1 for rest

... that's quite a big difference if one wants to focus on SPG stays&points

Elite Status nights:
Canada - nada
USA - 2 stays&5 nights towards next elite level

After August 11, the annual fee in the US will increase to 95 (so, basically same annual fee as us), BUT they also get additional benefits:

-NO FOREX FEES (yeah, wish we had more than ONE of those here...)
-Free Boingo Wifi (ever been to an airport with Boingo and no free wifi? yeah, it sucks)
-Sheraton Club Lounge access, aka free daily breakfast at Sheraton's

-sigh-

Sometimes I wish I had a credit file in the US, this would be so much better than the Canadian SPG, especially with no forex fees, you can easily just use it everywhere in Canada.

Two words ... "global transfer".

Also, UK has it worse than us. They pay £75 or so and get no nights benefit and only 10K points.

Japan is kind of a toss up. $320/year, but it has a free cat 6 night yearly.

Implies getting a US SSN & bank account though, which I'm pretty sure I need a US address for... I mean, I CAN ask a friend for his address, but the rest, not so sure how that'd work. Didn't even know that was a thing, seems pretty sweet for starting to build credit when moving though.

... Does it... does it work? if so, how? PM me if you don't wanna share, please :D

I'd argue a free cat 6 night at SPG is worth more than 200.-... but ouch, yeah, didn't know about the UK one.

I mean the US has better benefits in general (AA signup bonuses anyone), but the SPG we have a direct comparison so it just makes me feel worse :lol

US amex SPG is going up to 95 USD (123 cad) annual fee, but with waived forex fees (common down south, not so much in Canada)

Earnings rate for US SPG amex is 1 USD:1 SPG
Earnings rate for Canadian SPG amex is 1 cad (0.77 USD):1 SPG

The gap isn't as big as it used to be when the cad was at par

seem to recall reading something that basically said issuers make way more from your average US customer vs your average Canadian customer, so they're willing to offer bigger bonuses.

something to do with US consumers paying more interest, fees, carrying larger balances, etc.

1USD:2SPG for hotel-spend though, which can make quite the difference.

Question: does anyone know if you can pay car insurance/ICBC with a credit card? My car dealer won't let me pay my lease with one which is a bummer, what about car insurance? ICBC's phone lines are about as bad as aeroplan's -.-

If you pay annually all Autoplan brokers will accept Amex (and others) for ICBC insurance. Monthly payments only available via CTFS's bill payment interface. I've timed my Amex Business Gold app to coincide with renewal to knock a big chunk out

Some automakers financing arms are also on CTFS (Ford is for sure, Subaru and Toyota were not when I checked) so you could earn 1% back on Ford payments

Yes, you can pay your car insirance with a CC, regardless of whether you pay it all up front or if you are on AP12. It is up to the broker which credit cards they accept so just find a broker who takes the card you want to use.

Mazda only accepts pre-authorized bank withdrawals :(

Thanks for the responses! Knocking out a 3-month spend with it is exactly what I had in mind ;)

I just called ICBC and it's even more awesome than I thought, the guy was super helpful:

I can go to any autoplan broker, tell them I need to make a pre-payment and can pay any random amount of money with my credit card, and then ICBC will just deduct it from the balance when my payment is due. I don't even have to "time" it with my renewal date, I can do it anytime I want! That's sweet. So I can just pay month-to-month until I have a big minimum spend coming up, pay a large pre-payment to fullfill the spend and then don't have to worry about ICBC for a while.

Sweeeeeeeet.

Now if only Mazda was as cooperative... Maybe if I go to my dealer I can make a pre-payment too, but I'm not sure :lol

Thanks for the heads up. The IHG Capital One may be coming to an end fairly soon. When I called today the agent seemed to think it had already been canceled but it is still showing up on the website.

I absolutely disagree. SPG is the one and only one place Canadians have it better.

As yall know, I'm a double dipper. And yes, you need an SSN and U.S. physical address to get a US credit file. I play the game big time both down here and north of the border.

Re: the SPG card, the referral is 10K, plus the bonus, that's 30K per hard pull. US is only 25K. So you're paying less than $100 US for 5K extra points. Not great, but better than you made it out to be.

But the real bonus is on the MR transfer rate: 1 to 2 v. 1 to 3. Canada wins. In fact, I believe that the key to aspirational travel for Canadians is via this method. Now that the Aeros to US/AA via points.com transfer option is dead, I believe transferring to SPG is the way to go, and that's what I'm doing with mine.

Plus, the Sheraton lounge access is only for Biz cards anyway.

My 2 cents. Or Starpoints.

All true but....MR accumulation suddenly got a lot worse in Canada now that we've moved to the 1x personal card per lifetime model. So transferring at 0.5:1 to SPG from MR isn't as easy to swallow anymore. For me, makes me look at my Aeroplan options a lot more closely. As that's where I can build critical mass of points.

I'm also worried that Amex SPG will have a lower earn rate at some point...because it's costing Amex more to buy those points from SPG.