Buy Starpoints For 2.3 Cents Each & Airline Miles From 1.8 Cents Each

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I’m a bit late to the game on this one but better late than never!

Starwood and American express have launched an offer aimed at customers who hold one of the American Express SPG credit card which, coincidentally, I was discussing yesterday. The offer is for a 35% discount on Starpoint purchases though Points.com and, strangely, you don’t have to use an American Express SPG card for the purchase so, unless Starwood has a way of knowing if you have the SPG Amex card, the promotion would appear to be open to everyone.

The promotion is live right now and runs through 3 June 2016.

To be eligible for the 35% discount you have to be prepared to purchase a minimum of 5,000 Starpoints but you can purchase Starpoints in increments of 500 after that:

Each SPG account holder is limited to purchasing a maximum of 30,000 Starpoints per calendar year so, if you’ve bought Starpoints already this year, you won’t be able to max out this promotion.

The Math

The way the promotion is set up means that the number of Starpoints you purchase has no bearing on how much you’re paying for each point (as long as you buy 5,000 or more). Whether you buy 5,000, 20,000 or the maximum 30,000 you’ll still pay 2.275 cents/Starpoint:

$455 for 20,000 Starpoints = 2.275 cents/point

The reason why Starpoints are so popular are because they can be transferred into to just about every major airline loyalty program out there (35 in total) and, in most cases, they transfer over at a ratio of 1 Starpoint to 1 Airline mile. That makes Starpoints a very versatile currency to hold.

On top of that, when you transfer over Starpoints to an airline loyalty program in multiples of 20,000, Starwood adds on a 5,000 bonus:

With this in mind, the ideal number of Starpoints to transfer over to an airline’s loyalty program is 20,000, 40,000 or 60,000 (maximum allowed in one transfer is 79,999) as those transfers will earn you 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000 bonus points/miles respectively.

How much are you getting the airline miles for?

• If you were to purchase 20,000 Starpoints in the current promotion, as you can see from the earlier screenshot, it would set you back $455.
• The 20,000 Starpoints you purchase could then be converted to 25,000 airline miles (for most airlines)
• You’ve now essentially paid $455 for 25,000 airline miles which comes to 1.82 cents/mile

Bottom Line

This is the cheapest rate at which Starpoints have ever been sold so that’s getting a lot of people very excited. However, as “cheap” a rate as this is, you still need to have a plan for the Starpoints before you plunge headfirst into buying them.

30,000 Starpoints won’t get you more than a couple of nights in a particularly good Starwood property so are those two nights worth $455 to you? (yes, I know you can do better  than that in some instances but I’m discussing things in general terms here)

30,000 Starpoints will get you, at most, 35,000 airline miles so you need to be sure you have a plan for those before you decide to take up this promotion. 35,000 airline miles isn’t going to get you very far unless you already have a pot of miles you can add them to so make sure you choose where to transfer the Starpoints carefully.

I’m tempted to take Amex and Starwood up on this offer as a purchase would take my overall Starpoints balance into territory where a redemption I’ve been eying up for a few months in feasible…but I’m still thinking things over and, as this offer is on through 3 June there’s no hurry to decide.