In case you didn’t know, American Express has increased the sign up bonus on both the Personal & Business versions of the Starwoods Preferred Guest credit card to 30,000 points. This is great because the bonus is usually only 25,000 points (30,000 usually being offered once a year around August), they’ve also added some new benefits and increased the annual fee. It’s not so great if you recently applied under the 25,000 point bonus. I had a number of people ask if American Express would match the 30,000 offer and give them the extra 5,000 points, I said that American Express usually don’t match but it’s always worth a try anyway.
FYI, there are multiple reports of AMEX “matching” recent SPG apps to the new 30K offer. I use “” because AMEX doesn’t call it a match, they just call it a courtesy 5K SPG points. I called in last night for my business SPG application 2 weeks ago, and they gave me the 5K. I then had my wife call in; she applied for personal SPG in late April/early May, and they gave her 5K as well. I think AMEX must have changed their policy. I got the personal SPG in 2012, about 2 weeks before the 30K offer, and they wouldn’t do anything about it.
I don’t really care what American Express calls it, I’m just happy to hear that readers were able to get the extra 5,000 points. There is no guarantee that this will work for you and I’d recommend you doing it sooner rather than later (agents are much more likely to approve a request when they haven’t approved 300 similar requests earlier in the day).
