I havent had any experience of using my spg gold card, but my hilton gold has already had me a room upgrade and also bonus miles, so as nick says its been a more worthwile card for me too.
cheers
alex
cheers
alex
I found the Platinum Amex not worth it long term, though 40k miles makes it valuable for that first year. So take those miles, then cancel after 11 months is my advice. Also look out for promotions which VS run, giving you an extra 25% miles when you transfer Amex miles to them. makes it worth 50k miles, duh. So for 300 pounds you get roughly one leg of a long haul upper. a good deal.
Being a brit who emigrated to the US, I find that mileage cards are HUGE here, compared to the UK, plus are much better value. The principle is that your good credit rating (the ability to be approved for credit cards, etc) is an ASSET of yours, and that you should use this asset to regularly 'churn' your cards to make the most of the fresh card offers. In other words take the 30k/40k/50k miles, (meeting the minimum spend if required) and move on to the next one. There's an art in not doing it too much - your credit rating can suffer if you do, but one or two cards a year is fine.
I got Starwood (SPG) this month for 30k miles/ no annual fee/ $1000 spend. and 6 months back got the Chase BA one, which was an incredible 100k miles, plus a free voucher that doubles that after you spend 30k (which I managed to hit). amazing offer. Girlfriend applied too, and you can link accounts so we have over 250k miles for zero cost, and with my 30k spend voucher that is effectively doubled to 500k, which is a very nice pair of first class flights to virtually anywhere. unbelievable. VS gives you a voucher for a measly companion Economy seat for half usual miles, if you are a serious spender on their credit card. Big deal! I try to hit the BA one every year, and only after that am I back to VS.
VS amex - black one here in US - remains a good staple as it earns me Tier Points, to maintain my GC status, plus I try to buy stuff through their 'shopping partners' link, which e.g. on eBay, means you get extra miles again. Buy something big, like a $5000 camera, especially when eBay has a double miles offer on, and you can gets 10k from eBay and 7.5k from VS amex (1.5miles/1$), so thats a sweet haul of 17.5k miles (what you would have got from an UC transatlantic flight!) for simply buying an item with their card! Other shopping partners have double triple or 5x miles. Even Apple gives you miles, so that iPad or Phone you bought could be another few thousand miles in the bank if you buy via click-through on VS Amex.
I could go on, but it seems the UK have a way to go to latch onto the mileage card game, compared to the US. I'm just a beginner, there are countless websites with people who spend their entire life maximising this system!
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