Upgrade to better travel reported that the Starwood American Express is increasing their fees. Since I’ve written about the Starwood AMEX and it is one of my favorite points programs, I thought I would share my thoughts on the change.
I still have not received my note about the fee increase, but I’m guessing it is in the mail.
First, none of us is happy when the price of products increase. However, price increases are part of life. Who ever heard of something that doesn’t increase in prices?
Second, if you are an American, you should know that you still pay about half of what Canadians need to pay for a Starwood AMEX. I did a quick look at http://blog.rewardscanada.ca/2010/02/starwood-preferred-guest-credit-card.html, and most people in Canada are not too happy with the Starwood AMEX option. I personally think that $170 may be too much (depending on your usage).
If I were to pay for a credit card, the Starwood AMEX is one card that I would happily pay for – even at $65 per year. In fact, I’ve always kept credit cards only for a year and then canceled the card. However, I’ve actually been considering keeping a Starwood AMEX in my wallet so that I can keep getting those fantastic rewards.
One of my biggest complaints with the Starwood AMEX is that it carries the standard AMEX foreign currency exchange fees. Overseas, I much prefer a 0% foreign currency exchange credit card.
A reader recently asked if the Starwood program was a better way to collect points compared to the Aeroplan. Here’s my response:
That said I would probably rather 10,000 Starwood points and 1 point per dollar (for $170) than 1.25 Aeroplan points per dollar with no bonus points (for $120). Depending on how you use your points, we found Starwood points have between a 3-6 cents per point value. So if you stayed at Four Points YYZ (as an example) rather than paying $125 per night you would use 4,000 points (weekday) @ about 3 cent or (3%) rate of return. If you stayed on a weekend it would be more like 4 cents. However, if you spend 80,000 points get BUF-BNE then you save $1200 which is 1.5 cents per point.
You can do the math, but any time I’ve run the numbers, when you are getting a dollar per point, it is hard to beat the Starwood AMEX.
What are your thoughts? Would you pay $65 per year to keep a Starwood AMEX, or would you move on to greener pastures?
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