issy

Hi-
Does anyone have experience with this card?

We are thinking of switching from our airline Visa card, to the Starwood American Express card. The intriguing part with this card is that you can dump your "points" into any one of 30 or so airline frequent flyer programs.

My specific question is: when you call the airline to request award tickets, will they hold that reservation for you until the points are put into that specific airline award program? Starwood says it takes up to 2 weeks for domestic and 4 weeks for international carriers for the points to be transferred. They also say that if you tell the airline you are using Starwood points the airline will hold the seats for you until the points are transferred. Is that true?

Thanks!

Patty

In my experience the transfer time from SPG to a domestic airline program is usually less than one week. IIRC my last SPG to Delta transfer took 4 days to post to my Skymiles account.

Effective this month, Delta has reduced the hold period on any international award itinerary that includes a flight on any partner airline to 48 hours (previously it was 14 days). Domestic award itineraries and international itineraries that include only Delta operated flights will still be held for 14 days which is plenty of time for an SPG transfer.

I don't know what will happen if you have an intl partner itinerary and whether they'll extend the hold as I haven't had a chance to test it out since the change.

Other airlines have similarly short award hold periods. I believe United allows 72(?) hours (though it's unlikely you'll want to transfer to UA given the poor transfer ratio from SPG) and certain awards through Northwest Worldperks can't be held at all.

I'd contact the specific airlines that you're interested in transferring to and ask what would happen in this situation. I wouldn't rely on advice from a Starwood or Amex rep.

issy

Thanks Patty. That is some helpful information.

Tomorrow I plan on contacting a few of the airlines that we would typically redeem our points on and see what they say.

Ideally, I would like to purchase a coach ticket on an international carrier to Europe (e.g. British Air), and then use miles to upgrade.

Jed

I have been looking at the Starwood card, and it looks good. So good, that I think there must be a catch. Is there?

earlxx

Annual fee?
Added costs to all foreign transactions?

Patty

The annual fee is $30 but usually waived first year. Last time I checked the foreign conversion fee was 2% same as other Amex products.

Only other possible downside I can think of is the potential conflict between point to mile transfer time and airline award hold time.

Upsides are the number of participating airline programs - http://www.starwoodhotels.com/prefer..._checkRoc.html

5K bonus for every 20K transferred.

The ability to use your points for Starwood hotel awards.

issy

The $30 annual fee and 2% international conversion fee is correct.

Let me say first it is very difficult to get (hopefully) reliable information regarding the logistics of redeeming points for miles. To save time for those wanting to speak to someone at Starwood Preferred Guest call this # 1-877-782-7966.

I called a couple of airlines today that we use often and asked them about their policy on holding award reservations. It varies from 3 days to 2 weeks, depending on the carrier. I didn't even ask about international flights, nor did I get a hold of an international carrier (I got stuck in an automated loop with British Air!)

The problem that I see is that IF there happens to be a flight on the dates I want (big if) on a particular carrier, my Starwood points may not get transferred into that account before the holding period expires. The seats would get released and may not be available by the time my points get transferred. However, once your miles are transferred into any given airline award program, they cannot be transferred out to another carrier or back to Starwood.

I'm still on the fence with this, so if anyone else has any insight or personal experience, it would be greatly appreciated.

Jed

As to the length of the holding period, my experience is that the airline usually renews the reservation for a few more days if I need it. Wouldn't hurt to ask.

dona

Does anyone know if the Starwood Am Express points get transferred directly into your airlines FF account and may be combined with any miles already in the airline account? For example if one has 10,000 miles in an AA account, can one transfer the 20,000 points from the Starwood AMExp card and then have 30,000 ff miles?

Patty

That's exactly how it works, dona, except that if one has 10,000 miles in an AAdvantage account and transfers 20,000 from Starwood, one will end up with 35,000 AAdvantage miles (with the 5,000 transfer bonus).

issy

Dona-
Yes. Although if you transferred 20,000 miles, Starwood adds 5,000 more so you would really be adding 25,000 miles to your AA account. There are limits on the number of miles you can transfer per day (up to 99,000 in most cases I believe). But you can transfer more miles the following day.

issy

Patty - we were posting at the same time. Great minds think alike, or something like that!

Patty

BTW there's usually a better sign up bonus offer available than the standard one floating around out there somewhere. I found this one https://www201.americanexpress.com/c...8001044906/0/n on the www.freefrequentflyermiles.com site which does a good job of compiling and updating the latest offers.

cpd

I use my Starwood Am Exp almost exclusively to accumulate points. I don't know about others out there but I find it is almost always a better "value" to use my points for hotel rooms. Not to mention with the no blackout peiod policy Starwood has - it's easier to get rooms than Airline tickets.