Lucky and MilesQuest blogged earlier in the week about an offer of 30% bonus on transfers to Delta Skymiles from American Express through March 31 (registration required).
I meant to blog it for sake of completeness, in case any of y’all were going to happen to make transfers from American Express to Delta so as not to miss out on the bonus points. But it just wasn’t exciting enough to get around to, and certainly not a reason to proactively transfer from Amex to Skymiles. And since the bonus says it doesn’t post right away, it doesn’t help you transfer fewer points to top off for an award you’re about to redeem, it just gives you back more points later.
But Rene passes along a link for another bonus for first time transfers from Amex to Delta only, a 50% bonus on your transfer and 25,000 elite qualifying miles if you transfer 50,000 points or more through May 31 (registration required). As Rene points out, if you don’t have any Membership Rewards points you could sign up for an (expensive..) American Express Platinum card which gives you the ability to ‘borrow’ up to 60,000 points. Instant Silver status with Delta.
Not my cup of tea, I do have a Membership Rewards account and I’ve transferred a few small bits of miles to Delta here and there over the years to top off towards specific awards, I’m not personally eligible. I would probably do this just for the status if I were otherwise a Delta flyer — not to make silver but if it was going to make me Platinum instead of Gold. I wouldn’t do it just for the 50% bonus, since I’d prefer to hold back the flexibility of points and I still consider other best uses of Amex points worth better than 50% more than transfers to Delta. But it’s still an interesting offer, and better than the next-best one that I had recently seen out there.
This is very similar to the November/December offer, except only first-time transfers are eligible.
I did this one last year december for a family member. Transferred 50K AMR points to delta, they got 75K points, and 25K bonus, they were already silver and it made them GOLD in about 120 seconds! Worked out as a nice deal. Of course, the platinum deal might make it even sweeter.
Your analysis is spot-on as usual Gary. Aeroplan or one of the other international partners with MR is a much better use of those points than skypesos, even with the bonus.
Gary – If I do this, and get 25K elite qualification miles, will that be as if I attained status in Jan-Dec 2011 for 2012? Your thoughts?
In other words, it will make me Silver for rest of 2011 and 2012 and thru Feb 2013?
If so, I might be tempted – will wait till March 1 2011 to make sure that I do get downgraded from Silver to nobody (as did not fly 25K) and then do the transfer – if it really gives 2 yrs of Silver status, with nain benefit – no baggage fees and priority boarding.
@first time
Yes you will have SILVER status until FEB2013. If you fly more and earn GOLD you will have that until FEB2013 and so on and so on.
Really don’t think this is that bad of a deal at all. Even if you don’t fly much, if you have a DL Gold card you can get AMEX gift cards for $100 for only 11K miles. That’s a easy $700 in gift cards. Plus the $200 airline credit, lounge access, instant silver status and gold status for Starwood. With all that added up I would think you’d get more then double the bang for the buck.