With the Starwood SPG and Marriott account transformation looming it’s a good opportunity to remind our readers that hold SPG Platinum status that the options to transfer out very small balances will come to a close as well.
Transferring small and very specific amounts out of SPG was often popular to round up airline account balances and especially to ping frequent flyer accounts that have changed to 18-months mileage expiration policy.
Being able to transfer as little as one (1) SPG point to airlines frequent flyer programs together with the 5000 Mile bonus for 20k Transfer was always one of my favorite features of SPG. Some programs are being used by myself as a random account for exotic partners for example Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. Even my American Airlines AAdvantage account where I haven’t had an earning transaction for quite some time was recently the recipient of a 1 mile transfer.
You can access SPG ‘Transfer Air Miles’ redemption option here.
For every 20,000 Starpoints transferred by a SPG Member to a single transfer partner program within the same transaction, Starwood will automatically add an additional transfer transaction bonus of 5,000 Starpoints! This means that up to a total of 94,999 Starpoints per 24-hour period may be able to be transferred into the SPG Member’s transfer partner membership account with most transfer partners, making a free trip that much closer.3 Please keep in mind that SPG Members may only transfer Starpoints to the same transfer partner program once within a 24-hour period.
There is no minimum Starpoint transfer requirement for Platinum Preferred Guests, except where transfer ratios are not 1:1.4 Gold Preferred Guests have a minimum transfer requirement of 1,500 Starpoints, and Preferred Guests have a minimum transfer requirement of 2,500 Starpoints.
Many frequent flyer programs have changed to a policy that requires members to have one transaction every 18-24 months in order to keep existing balances from expiring. They did this for multiple reasons – one being that dormant accounts can be eliminated and those miles no longer weigh on the programs balance sheet. Another point is that many carriers sell reactivation of miles for cash so they get paid for basically doing nothing except giving customers their own miles back.
While I try to do my best and avoid having miles expire sometimes things slip the mind and so it happened so I had almost 20k AAdvantage miles expire last year despite having lifetime status there. I was eventually able to get American to reinstate those miles asking them to credit an old car rental that earned me 50 miles and reset the timer.
Last month I transferred a point to Alaska again as I only use that program sporadically:
Even though there hasn’t been any announcement made what features are going to disappear you can assume it’s pretty much a given that the most attractive ones will disappear. For sure there won’t be a universal 5,000 miles bonus for mileage transfers anymore. They have a Rewards Plus
As soon as SPG and Marriott Rewards melt into a common platform the party is over and even though there are some redemption sweet spots under the new chart the majority of changes are rather negative.
Conclusion
If you need to ping some accounts that you rarely use then this might be the time to do it without using a large amount of points – at least if you’re Platinum.
SPG already has a notice on their website that the site will go dark for vital functions on August 18th and that doesn’t just include points activity related things. Best to get everything in order during the next couple of days and I also suggest to take screenshots of your account details including balances, nights and stay counts.