Starwood Hotels Card: 25K Points Bonus/Free Nights

This sounds tempting; enough pts. for up to 6 comped nights at their lower category hotels.

It's ok. It's been 30k before. Also noteworthy. You can transfer 20k of those points to 25k airline points with airlines such as AA and US Air (but the ratio is halved to 12.5k for United).

$5K spending in 6 months for 25K starwood points is far from the best, even if starwood points are more valuable than points from other hotel chains. As mentioned already, they were giving 30K points after your first purchase not long ago. I would wait for a better bonus from starwood, signup bonuses still seem to be at their peak and there are plenty of better offers around still. Priority club has (or had) 60K points (12 nights at lowest category) after first purchase, Marriott has/had a 50K point offer after first purchase (5 nights at cat. 2 + 1 night anywhere), and 75K (+night) targeted. Hilton has something similar with 40K points now after spending $750 (60K for their annual fee card with much more spending), but better offers have appeared in the past there as well.

In any case, it is good to know of the current best offer by starwood, but, if one can wait, a better offer is very probable to pop up at some point.

wotus said:   papa, I may be mistaken, but I believe 10K of those are given after the first purchase on the card, and then 15k more after spending $5k or more within 6 mos. The Marriott card sounds great I'm going to look into that one.

The Mariott card sucks. Check out how many points you need to redeem for a hotel. 10K Starwood points get you a 200-300+ hotel room. 10K mariott points will get you a Courtyard
Mariott if you are lucky. All points are not equal.

Rob

papamicd said:   wotus said:   papa, I may be mistaken, but I believe 10K of those are given after the first purchase on the card, and then 15k more after spending $5k or more within 6 mos. The Marriott card sounds great I'm going to look into that one.

That does seem to be the case. By the way, unless something has changed from a few months ago, if reserved for Friday or Saturday nights and booked early enough, rooms in categories 1 and 2 with starwood cost 3000 points, so that 25K would be enough for 8 nights. And starwood actually have pretty decent offerings in these lowest categories, even in popular destinations, as opposed to other chains and their lowest categories, which are usually hotels in remote areas and/or off season times of the year. There are exceptions of course, such as an Alexandria (VA) Holiday Inn 5000 point/night stay in Spring with priority club, where the night usually costs in the order of $160/night.

Thanks for the info, that's pretty awesome.

BNizzle said:   I applied for this card about a year ago and was denied bonus points as I had been a cardholder in 2009. Just an FYI.

How long after cancelling the first card did you apply for the second one?

Any success stories in getting twice (or more times) the signup bonus from starwood? I was under the impression that it is possible, unless something has changed recently...

BNizzle said:   ~2 years. I had gotten the signup bonus prior to that (which was my second).

I have successfully repeated this signup bonus. I had to wait for 2 years after closing the previous card before applying for the next.

It usually 18months and over for the ability to reapply. The best deal is usually for cash and points using SPG points. Also using the points toward their high end hotels is not a good value.

I have cancelled the card every year at renewal. In some cases less than 6 months after I reapplied and received the points. At least three times. I will not be doing this in the current climate.

teammjs said:   snugglening said:   It usually 18months and over for the ability to reapply. The best deal is usually for cash and points using SPG points. Also using the points toward their high end hotels is not a good value.

Not true with AMEX. AMEX (at least personal) usually requires 2 years from point the card has been cancelled. Citi is at least 18 months (conventional wisdom is to try to wait until 20 months) on their AA cards from point of approval. Chase, you're pretty much SOL on churning unless it's a new card product.

This has not been my experience as I posted or my wifes. And this is on other cards, including the gold cards. It must depend on your payment record.

AMEX has leeway on what they approve or disapprove. When it comes to receiving points, getting approved for a new card etc. Some people on FW were approved for a card, in less than the csr stated time some were not. Some people were reviewed by AMEX etc. YMMV It looks like there is no answer except it depends on a lot of factors unknown to us. Oh, it is well known that CSR are clueless.