2,000 Bonus Starpoints on Starwood American Express
If you have the Starwood American Express card, you can earn an extra 2,000 Starpoints if you visit this page, apply for additional cards for two new people, and make a purchase. Now, you don’t need to provide Social Security numbers and you don’t need to give the cards to these people (they just need to be age 15 or over). I just ordered new cards with Mom and Dad’s name. The additional cards are free, and have no annual fee. For some reason it worked in Internet Explorer but not Firefox for me. Via FW. The fine print:
1,000 bonus Starpoints will be awarded to your Starwood Preferred Guest Account 8-12 weeks after the first purchase on an approved Additional Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card submitted with this application. The Additional Cardmember must make their first purchase with the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card within one year of Card approval. Bonus offer applies to first 2 Additional Card added on this application only.
This card is still one of my favorite rewards credit cards, due to it’s flexibility in earning both frequent flier miles and hotel awards. If you sign up now, you can earn a free 10,000 Starpoints after your first purchase, good for either a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate or up to 3 hotel nights.
In addition to the usual 1 point per dollar spent, the current promotion also adds another additional 15,000 Starpoints if you spend $15,000 within the first 6 months. Altogether, if reach this $15,000 spending level, that gives you a total of 10,000 + 15,000 + 15,000 = 40,000 Starpoints. 40,000 Starpoints can be converted to 50,000 frequent flyer miles - good for either two standard free flight awards or one of those Anytime free flight awards. Going for the staycation? You can also get $400 in Amazon.com gift certificates instead.
Find more in Credit Cards | 7/23/08, 4:41am | Trackback
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:12 am
Your link works for me on FF (or at least I can’t seem to see anything wrong).
It has fields for the following info:
* Your first name
* Your last name
* Your Amex acct. no.
* Your Amex card ID
* Last 4 digits of your SSN.
Combined with your comment that “you don’t need to provide Social Security numbers,” this last field confused me. Did you mean either a) you don’t need to provide the recipients’ SSNs, or b) you don’t need to provide your full SSN?
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:16 am
I understood “you don’t need to provide Social Security numbers” to mean that you don’t need to provide SSNs for the additional card recipients.
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:28 am
I love starpoints - going to Hawaii and staying with a Sheraton resort for 2 weeks and “paying” for the entire stay with starpoints. Also getting the flights on frequent flyer miles. Only have to pay for rental car and food.
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:58 am
Do you think AMEX’s low profits and poor performance in the last quarter is pushing them to offer more incentives? If so, we can expect to see more of this from AMEX.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:13 am
All credit card companies are starting to look for more ways to get consumers to spend. Especially American express because of their card numbers. I don’t know if it would be worth getting another card over.
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:21 am
$15K in 6 months? I’ll never come close to that. I also hate having to play games with points, gimme cash! I recently got a Household Bank card that gives 2% back on everything.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Amex has been offering this promo for ages, and it works if you can manage $15k in expenses in 6 month. You could potentially get additional cards, give them to your family, have them pour their expenses through the card and then pay you directly for money spent.
Regarding 2% cashback
I recently used some of my miles to buy LAX-Moscow roundtrip coach there and business class back. It cost me 70k miles+$245 in taxes.The same ticket would cost $3740 if paid cash.
70k miles took me $60k(with 5000 miles leftover) in spending over the period of several years.
With 2% cashback, all you would get for spending $60k is $1200 in cashback, in fact you would need a card with 6% cashback to match the value you get back with amex.
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
…not giving them the SS numbers of the other card holders.. Does that mean this card will not show up on their credit report?
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Fred - (a) you don’t need to provide the SSNs for additional cardholders.
KidZ - I don’t know if the card will show up on their credit report, it depends if they connect the dots on their own. I like to use nicknames to prevent this from happening. Instead of William Smith, I’ll do Billy Smith. Of course, some people may want it to show up.
Yes, if you are careful with the points and travel, Starpoints are great. For example, 2,000 points has gotten me a free hotel night while interview for jobs, complete with no taxes paid. That would have been $80 easily.
July 25th, 2008 at 6:38 am
Can Starwood points be transferred to my existing frequent flyer account at American Airlines?
July 25th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Starwood points can be transferred into a number off mileage programs including American.
The transfer is done through their website where you basically specify a number of points, the mileage program and your mileage number.
The transfer is supposed to several weeks, but my latest Delta transfer took about 3-4 days.
Here is a list of participating airlines and mileage programs:
http://www.starwoodhotels.com/....._list.html
August 14th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Just came across your blog. Love it. On the application I don’t see where it says anything about the $100 Amazon gift certificate. Is that still available. I don’t travel much so I would be more interested in the Amazon certificate. Anyways, great blog