After 1 year, with the $95 annual fee, I was told that there was not retention offer for my Surpass, then I was asked if I wanted to downgrade it to a no fee Hilton Honors card. I said that I need to think about it. I see that there are 80,000 Hilton Honors Bonus Points as a signup bonus for the Hilton Honors Card. If I downgrade, I won't get this signup bonus, but if I cancel, can I get this signup bonus later? If yes, when could I apply to this Hilton card? I know that with Amex, you cannot get the signup bonus on the same card twice, but the Hilton Honors card is not the same as the Hilton Honors Surpass card.
Is $480 in redemption value worth the score dip? Also is it worth affecting your scoring with banks that use trended data, like Chase? If you decide it is, try not to spook Amex and wait at the minimum 3 months after cancelling.
The statement balance of February was $288. The annual fee hit me on 3/29. Now, the posted balance is $1012. I usually pay on the 17th of each month.
Do you think that if I paid the posted balance of $1012 now, I could get a retention offer? I don't know if it has something to do.
If there is no effect, could I apply for the Hilton card to get their 80,000 Hilton honors points, then after that, I'm afraid that if I close my Surpass card, they could withdraw the 80,000 Hilton honors points theey gave me, so I could keep my Surpass for 1 more year and pay the AF, then I would cancel it in 1 year. Would that be a good strategy?
@4sallypat wrote:Doesn't Amex claw back points if the card is cancelled if less than 13 months ?
Card has to be open a year. You should wait until the AF posts. There are reports it can happen if the card is closed before 2 years.
I wrote "Do you think that if I posted the posted balance of $1012 now, I could get a retention offer?", that was a mistake, I wanted to say "Do you think that if I PAID the posted balance of $1012 now, I could get a retention offer?".
Why didn't they offer me a retention offer?
I tried to apply for the Hilton Honors card and this is the message I got: "based on your history with credit card balance transfers, American Express welcome offers, introductory APR offers, or the number of Cards you have opened and closed, you are not eligible to receive the welcome offer.We have not yet performed a credit check. Would you still like to proceed?".
So I replied No.
Now, I have to think if I should downgrade or pay the annual fee to keep it.
What are the advantages of keeping the Surpass compared to downgrading? 1 benefit was the Priority Pass membership, which would allow me to get 10 free lounge visits each Priority Pass Membership year. The only airports I'm interested are: Miami, Flort Lauderdale and Paris. When I log out of my Priority Pass account, I can see lounges in these 3 airports, but when I log in to my account, I see none!
When I contacted Priority Pass support by email, I was told "Kindly note that you get your Priority Pass membership through American Express, therefore you can only access a set amount of lounges and non-lounge locations. The lounges you see available when you are logged into your online account are the ones you can access.".
This is very disappointing. Does someone know about this problem?
Except that, I have 132,474 Hilton Honors points remaining, so that will get me soon 3 Hilton nights. The other benefit is: Free continental breakfast. Last time, we were 2 adults, 2 kids. So 3 times 4 = 12 continental breakfast for $95, that's worth it.
After some investigation, things are not as clear as they seemed. My first experience with Hilton Honors was at the Hampton Inn. We had free breakfast, but I remember that nobody checked me when I took the breakfast. That is because these are the Hilton hotel brands that offer free breakfast for everyone: Canopy. Embassy Suites. Hampton Inn. The only small benefit as a Gold member would be to receive free bottles of water and snacks when we arrive at the hotel. So keeping the Gold is not really very interesting for me in this case.
About Priority Pass, when I log in to their web site with my account, I saw no lounge available for me in the USA! But when I used the Priority Pass app, I could see lounges in different airports. So I think that their web site needs to be fixed, while their app is working well.
A few days ago, I noticed a bug in the Offer Up web site (for classified ads), but not bug in their app. So it seems that companies seem to be maintain their app very well, but not always their web site.