changing credit cards
 

I never seem to fly enough to get status, but my small business which operates on a very fine margin seem to buy about 9000-10000 dollars worth of supplies every month.

Currently I'm using the aadvantage business credit card. Now I don't have status but apparently using the business credit card means that you don't have the limit on miles that can be transferred into your account each year. Last year had approximately 90 to 100,000 transferred into my account.

I am considering switching to the Starwood American Express card so that I can get the bonus every time I transfer over 20,000 miles. I believe they should actually net me 25,000 miles approximately every two months.

I am concerned though that because I don't have the transfercoming from the business Citibank card and I don't even have gold status, that I'm not going to be able to transfer over, I don't remember exactly what it is, the arbitrary number.like 50,000 miles.

Should I actually be concerned about this?

I'm not sure I understand your question.

If your question is about cancelling the Citi AA Business card, then you should stop using the card, wait for all the miles from existing purchases post, and then cancel.

If you are asking about points earning limits with the Starwood Amex, there aren't any that I am aware of. Transfers from Starwood to most FF programs are limited to 99,999 at one time--but that's a DAILY limit.

sorry i probably wouldn't cancel the aa business card because i have 2 employees that occasionally use it, and it's not that expensive for managing 3 different accounts. But the largest purchases are by me.

the reason i was asking about point transfers is that when i had a regular old aa card before the business card, there was a maximum number of miles you could transfer in a year unless you had status, and i think the max was like 50k.

I think you are referring to the Mileage earning cap during each year. I do believe that unless you are AAdvantage gold and above, you can only accumulate 50,000 AAdvantage miles every year using each of the CitiBank AAdvantage cards. If you are AAdvantage gold and above, there is no cap.

But that limit is per card. Also, there is no limit that I know of for how many starpoints you can transfer to miles using the Starwood AMEX.

The only limit would be the very high limit imposed by American on the maximum number of partner miles one can accumulate in one year, so I wouldn't worry about the 50,000 limit since it won't apply to the Starwood AMEX.

I'm not familiar with that one. Can you provide more info, or a link?

Starwood is the way to go.

At this point, just add AMEX Starpoints and use it whenever you can, and use your AA business card when someplace doesn't take AMEX. Try it for a year and see how much you end up charging on your AA card. The $85 a year AA card (world platinum) allows a cap of 100,000 a year earned without status, and with your AMEX being the main card the AA card might not be used that much. Also you can get secondary cards on AMEX at no fee and each card has it's own number so your employees could be gotten cards if you like - also as first choice.I don't know how much the AA business card costs compared to the world platinum card, nor the pluses or minuses of one compared to the other. My AA card fee is waived because I have a citigold account at Citibank (numerous threads about that account elsewhere).

One advantage of sticking with AA is that once you accumulate 1,000,000 miles from all sources, you become Gold for Life. Reach 2 million and your Platinum.

Yes, and transferring points from Starpoints over to your aa account with 5,000 bonus miles can speed up that goal. It did for me.

Actually with Citi Aadvantage business card your maximum yearly mileage is 150,000 unless you have a status, so I would stick with your card and try to get a gold status.

Why?

He would get a milage bonus with the Starwood Amex (25k miles for every 20k points) and no yearly cap on how much he can transfer. Plus the miles he transfers over still apply to "lifetime" status goal. Why should he stick with the AA card?

Well, for starters, a lot of places do not accept AMEX...

That's about the ONLY reason I can think of, actually!

That is why he needs both. The $30 fee after the first free year is worth the bonuses, good hotel exchange, transfers between family members, etc. Use AMEX with every place that takes it, the AA card for everthing else and see how it is after a year what usage the AA has.