The Offer
- American Express have increased the sign up bonus on the Hilton HHonors Surpass card to 100,000 points if you spend $3,000 or more within three months of account opening
The Fine Print
- Annual fee of $75 is not waived
- American Express personal cards are not churnable. Welcome bonus is not available to those who have or who have had this card in the past.
- Card earns at the following rates:
- 12x points per dollar on purchases with a participating hotel or resort within the Hilton Portfolio
- 6x points per dollar U.S restaurants [read: best credit cards for restaurant purchases]
- 6x points per dollar at U.S supermarkets [read: best credit cards for grocery store spend]
- 6x points per dollar at U.S gas stations [read: best credit cards for gas station purchases]
- 3x points per dollar on all other purchases [read: best credit cards for every day spend]
- Card comes with complimentary gold status, if you spend $40,000 or more in a calendar year you will receive HHonors Diamond status through the end of next year
- Free priority pass membership
Our Verdict
Update: No annual fee card is also up to 75,000 points.
Standard bonus used to be 60,000 points, but we saw an increased offer to 85,000 points back in February. This is now the highest bonus we’ve seen by 15,000 points. As always, make sure you familiarize yourself with how much Hilton points are worth before pulling the trigger and remember you can only get the sign up bonus once per lifetime on American Express cards.
If you’ve recently applied for this card, it’s worth calling American Express to see if they’ll match (they don’t actually match, but they sometimes offer courtesy points). Here’s how to go about requesting a match:
- Don’t message, online representatives do not have the ability to award courtesy points.
- Call and say you’re disappointed that a new higher bonus became available so recently after you applied.
- If you don’t get the full match then escalate. Ask politely to be escalated to a manager and repeat your disappointment in American Express due to the bonus change.
- If they say they’ll put in a request to get the bonus points, decline and hang up and call again. The requests are basically a blackhole and never get honored and removed your ability to try again.
Before applying/asking a question in the comments please read these 20 Things Everybody Should Know About American Express.
NVM – just saw where offer ended 5/4. Bummer!
The link now shows a 75K bonus, not 100K.
Doc, thanks so much for your advice to match!
The first time I called, no dice with the rep nor with the supervisor.
But I told them not to file a report.
I called a couple days later (during A-team hours), rep offered to file a report, I asked if she could manually do courtesy points instead so I don’t have to wait 2 weeks, she said she would check with her supervisor, and she came back with approval!
And I hadn’t even hit the spend threshold yet.
Any idea if this is available as an upgrade from the 0 AF card?
Think so, bonus only 50k though and would rule you out for getting the bonus on this card again.
Called in, asked to be matched to the 100k offer (signed up for the 80k 3 months ago), was told a supervisor would call me back in 10 min, 30 min later get a call from the supervisor and stated they would match the 20k point difference!
Does anyone know what I can do with these points? Possibly buy gift cards?
Called twice with no luck in matching. Account was opened last month. All a supervisor offered was 5k points so I took that
Made the phone call, spoke with 3 agents. No one allows matching.
Could we post refer link here? As the new offer is public
Did you escalate to a manager?
Yes, I do. Said market people do not allow to match
Is the complimentary gold status only for the initial calendar year, or is it available every year you have the card?
My understanding is you remain gold as long as your a card holder.