American Express is offering me an upgrade my plain jane Hilton HHonors to the Hilton HHonors Surpass card.
From a quick look online, I would be able to upgrade the card without a hard inquiry to my credit. Like the public offer, I’d still pay the $75 annual fee that isn’t waived. Besides the inquiry, the biggest difference is the 10,000 Hilton HHonors points. I currently have about 60k points banked and adding 50k bonus would put me at 110k points. While that’s a nice number for most programs, it is not nice for the Hilton program. Redeeming for any Hilton room is incredibly difficult because of the high point requirements and lack of points and cash availability.
I won’t be upgrading my Hilton HHonors card because I don’t have any upcoming travel plans where I could utilize all the points.
For those who can take advantage of this, don’t forget you’d earn 6x points at Supermarkets and that is where I would put all the spend, minimum and all.
How long have you had Hilton card until you are able to upgrade?
For me, this offer came up right at the 1 year anniversary.
Come to think of it, it’s not bad of an offer for the 12 months, no annual fee, collect some HHonors points, take advantage of some Sync offers, then pay $75 for an annual fee for the new card for more points + Surpass bennies
Just cancel/downgrade within 2 months to avoid the annual fee. 68k Hilton points for only GC fees seems decent enough even if you don’t have immediate plans.
I got the same offer and came to the same conclusion. Canceling / downgrading within the first 2 months is a possibility but I’m not sure I really feel great about doing that…
@Mike great idea! Like @Points with a Crew, it’s probably not something I would do either
Pretty difficult to not do the upgrade. The bonus points are nice and Surpass 6x at grocery means you can get a lot of cheap HH and get Diamond with only $40K spend. SO and I both did the upgrades and both have Diamond. A no brainer if you like Hilton.
Good point! I’d have approx 118k points if I did pure grocery MS after the MSR. I do like how Hilton is ubiquitous
Why the 10,000 point difference between the 60,000 offer at the top and the upgrade offer of 50,000?
What the AMEX loyalty team did on that offer didn’t make sense to me either
My upgrade offer is only for 50k points.