This is a quick reminder that the targeted offer for transferring your American Express Membership Reward points to SPG points with a 50% bonus is ending today, November 17. Typically, the transfer rate is 3:1 (meaning every 3 Membership Reward points = 1 SPG point) which is not a good deal! With the current bonus, that means you can transfer at a 2:1 ratio which is slightly better, but still not a ratio that I would personally transfer at. I believe you will get more value by transferring those Membership Reward points to an airline partner, but it all depends on where you are looking to go.
Remember, SPG now also transfers to Marriott points, so if you were looking to redeem your Membership Reward points at Marriott properties you can now do so. Since SPG transfers to Marriott at 1:3, with this current promotion, you are ultimately transferring your Membership Reward points to Marriott points at a 2:3 ratio. Again, not typically a ratio I’d recommend, but it is better then the Chase to Marriott transfer rate which is always 1:1.
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1) Please put “Targeted” in your blog post headline.
2) AMEX doesn’t know how to do math. A 50% increase of the prevailing conversion ratio would mean that the baseline conversion of 3:1 would move to 3:1.5. A 3:2 conversion would effectively be a 100% increase; 1 SPG point becomes 2 SPG points for the same amount of transferred MRs.
3) Your statement of “Since SPG transfers to Marriott at 1:3, with this current promotion, you are ultimately transferring your Membership Reward points to Marriott points at a 2:3 ratio,” is mathematically incorrect. If under this promotion 3 Membership Rewards covert to 2 SPGs and 2 SPGs covert to 6 Marriott Rewards, you are effectively transferring 1 Membership Reward to 2 Marriott Rewards, simplified. Does this change your opinion of the worthiness of the AMEX promotion?
Respectfully,
Deals Wemight Like
@matt – Let’s get you back to Deals We LOVE!
To answer your questions:
1) many offers that I write about are targeted and if it is not in the headline is always within the first few sentences of the post (which it is here).
2) You are right, it is a 2:1 conversion. So 2 Amex Membership Reward points = 1 SPG point. Thanks for pointing out. I will update.
3) To transfer to Marriott, it is ultimately 2:3. So 2 Amex Membership Reward points = 3 Marriott points. This part in the post was correct.
I still personally wouldn’t transfer my Amex points to Marriott points as I can typically get a much better value with airline partners, but it all depends on how you like to use your points. As I mentioned in the post though, this is still a better transfer ratio then using your Chase Ultimate Reward points.
Thanks for pointing out the typo!