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I like the Starwood American Express card….in fact I like it so much I have one in each country I’m allowed to hold one. Starpoints are one of the harder currencies to collect but, as they convert pretty generously to most major airlines loyalty programs (we’ve seen some great offers in the recent past), they’re a currency I consider to be worth collecting.
I don’t value Starpoints as highly as I know some people do….but then I tend to have lower valuations than most across all the loyalty currencies so that isn’t anything strange. But I value them highly enough to put a lot of my unbonused spend on to my SPG Amex cards and I do my best to earn bonus Starpoints whenever the opportunity arises.
One such opportunity is referring friends and family for the SPG American Express Card.
American Express likes getting new cardholders so they’re prepared to offer existing cardholders bonus Starpoints (or other currencies in the case of other cobranded cards) for any friends or family they refer to them who then go on to be approved for a new card.
Historically the number of Starpoints on offer has been 5,000 per successful referral but, as of now, the bonus has been boosted by 50%
I value Starpoints at around 1.8 cents each so each referral would effectively be worth around $135 to me….but with SPG award nights starting as low as 3,000 points you can probably get even more value than that.
While the individual bonus had gone up by 50% the annual cap of 55,000 Starpoints has been maintained – you can’t earn more Starpoints from referrals than in previous years, you just need fewer friends who are willing to listen to you! 🙂
It’s also not just the referer who get as bonus….successful applicants still get a signup bonus too:
As the referral section of the American Express website shows, the referral prices is pretty simple:
First of all you login to your Amex account from the referral page……
….and you then fill in the simplest of forms…..
….while being careful to change the wording in the message box to whatever you’d like it to say to the person receiving the offer.
Offer Terms
Bottom Line
If you have friends and family who don’t have the Starwood card from American Express then this could be a good way to introduce them to a good credit card and to get something out of it for yourself too.
However it’s worth pointing out that we have seen signup bonuses on Starwood’s co-branded Amex Cards as high as 35,000 Starpoints so anyone being accepted for a card right now would be accepting as lower signup bonus than may become available in the future. With Amex’s rules stipulating that cardholders can only earn one signup bonus per card per lifetime that may not be the most prudent course of action for those receiving a referral – you should probably bear that in mind when choosing who you send the referral links too.
