Passed along to me this morning, thanks to Don: American Express is promoting
adding an authorzed user to your Starwood Amex account by offering 2500 Starwood points with the first additional card requested.

The offer comes via email — the web page for adding an authorized user to your account does not mention the bonus. No offer code is listed. The terms and conditions (which don’t mention this as targeted or restricted in any way to recipients of the email) are as follows:

Terms and Conditions (when applicable)


1. The Additional Cardmember must be 18 or older and never have had a defaulted account with American Express. Any account you have with American Express must not be in default.



2. 2,500 bonus Starpoints will be awarded to your Starpoints Account in 8-12 weeks for an approved Additional Card submitted with this application. Bonus offer applies to first Additional Card only.

Now, I already have one authorized user on my own account. I don’t know whether I can earn the bonus by adding one more user or not. Perhaps they screened out cardholders that already have an authorized user on their card account, which would explain why I didn’t receive this myself, but that’s speculation based on a single data point.

You might call Amex for clarification, though the odds of the customer service rep having any idea (or getting the correct answer if they do) is probabilistic at best.

Still, the chance at 2500 Starwood points may be worth the effort, especially since no fee is involved for adding a card to the account.