Nanook

After opening an account, do you have to make a trade? Can you just leave the money sitting there for 6 months? I've maxed out my savings bond purchases this year, so this seems to be the quickest easiest way to get 20,000 Starpoints.

bocastephen

you dont have to make any trades, but I am still waiting for my points 3 months after making the deposit. I have two supervisors at Starwood working on it who are unable to get the problem resolved to date, and Ameritrade is two shades of useless in trying to help them fix it.

if you leave the money on deposit, the interest earned is very low...their money market options are even worse.

better option for $25,000 depositors...deposit 25K into Ameritrade...(hope you) get your 10K points...pull out your money right away...then use the Amex starwood card to buy 25K in bonds. Now you have 35,000 starwood points on a 25,000 purchase and will earn much better interest.

EricH

No, you don't have to make any trades, but keep in mind that Ameritrade pays almost no interest on cash balances. In this interest-rate environment that might not cost much, but it does cost something. If rates go up, these can become expensive points.

sun-chaser

I setup an account according to the promotion, stepped through the electronic funding option on their website, and ran into a $20K limitation for account funding. I continued, and at the end of the account opening process the site thanked me for opening the account and quite clearly for choosing the SPG award for 20,000 points. There was NO indication whatsoever that the award criteria had not been met. I naively thought that Ameritrade had simply realized that it was not good customer service to base an award on $25K and limit a popular account funding choice to $20K, and that they had simply allowed an unadvertised waiver within the software.

I waited, and eventually sent email. The account representative simply stated that since I had not complied with the program criteria, I would not receive the points. No matter what their website said. I could send a check for $5000 and still participate (though this was already *after* I had been on my trip where I was expecting to have at least the first 10000 points). He added that it would be a good idea to include a note with the check that I had chosen the SPG award option and that I should be credited accordingly.

This left a bad taste with me for Ameritrade. If I have to always second guess what their website says plainly with fine print, I don't want to trade at their company. So, they will eventually get $5000 more dollars, just long enough for me to get my points and close the account (where before I was honestly thinking of moving from E*Trade if I liked what I saw).

Brendan

On Sep. 18 I spoke to an Ameritrade rep who said that they had just corrected their glitch w/*wood & promised me my 20K within 2 weeks ( <=Oct. 2). On Oct. 4 someone at *wood promised to send an inquiry to their liaison person to investigate, but today I was told that all she did was to note my account that I had called.

Mr. Lurker, could you please investigate our missing *points from Ameritrade?

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Play the travel game 3 vacations into the future!

Counsellor

Not by very much (unless they change their practice). As I recall, a couple of years ago when the usual money market account was paying around 3%, they were paying the munificent rate of 0.1% (one tenth of one percent).

Retired FF

Is this offer valid for Canadians also? I went to fill out the online application for 'Canadians" and it asked me for an offer code "To receive your special offer, enter the four-character offer code". ??

Retired FF

Any Candian been able to sign up for this promo? If so, please advise what the promotion code is to be used to sign up. Thanks.

KebaNYC

FYI,

Just noticed that the second 10,000 points posted yesterday. Exactly 6 months after the first posting.

Keba

michaelr

I did the offer too with United miles. I already had an Ameritrade account and opened a second one with $5k cash. I then transfered $10k worth of stock to the new account and withdrew the $5k cash. Both the initially miles and the second set posted like clockwork.

I then transfered the stocks back and closed the second account. No fees at the time and I don't think there are any today.

Edited to say that I think that Ameritrade is a good discount broker. Never had any problems with them.



[This message has been edited by michaelr (edited Dec 18, 2003).]

VolleyballFerd

If the money market rate is going to be your concern (perhaps putting in cash and holding till you get the points) - don't do it. They pay something like a dollar or two per million dollars. Truthfully, it is well below 1 percent, though I don't know exactly.

Also, I believe you need to tell them you want it in a money market, or it gets even less (if that is possible).

Alcibiades

Anyone who had only cash left in the account at the time of account closure get charged the $50 fee ?

sucker777

No fee to get a check cashing out.

Schutzee

I took three months after my six month anniversary to post the seconf 10,000 points. On the bright side, I called last Thursday for a check for the full account balance. I received it yesterday, an I was NOT charged any fee!

nowhereman

I'm thinking of opening an Ameritrade account in order to earn some *wood points (http://www.ameritrade.com/spg). Has anyone taken advantage of it? Would you say its worth it? I currently use E*Trade. How does Ameritrade compare to E*Trade?

Thanks for your suggestions!