New home for 850k Points

[bravoecho1]

My wife previously had a business where we were able to use a industry branded AMEX card to pay for 90% of purchases.

Fast forward 3 years and after giving birth to our second daughter she has decided that she is going to take the next 3-5 years off. Currently we are paying $600 p.a in annual fees and after talking to our AMEX contact he advised that we cant transfer the points to my AMEX card because it is in a higher tier. Not sure what he is referring to there.

The only option open to us is to continue to pay the $600 p.a. to keep the points parked or to transfer them out to an airline program. My question to the informed AFFers is where should I transfer the points? Currently we have a few points in QFF under both names and I will be doing a bit of flying over the next 12-24 months (every 3 months in Y to PVG from BNE). We normally use our points for full redemptions and every now and then we may use points to upgrade.

Taking into account the problem of expiring points in various programs what would be the best airline program to transfer them to? Our travel destinations are usually Europe, Asia and North America.

Thank you in advance.

 

[Danger UXB]

Can you not just down grade the card to another Amex eg Green Charge and keep the MR account open, that way no pressure to make a big choice now and the points have no expiry.I believe it is the MR account that the points are attached to not the card. I have multiple cards and only one MR account
Cheers Danger UXB

 

[drron]

It would seem Danger's suggestion is worth pursuing as that would be what you wanted.
I see you are with QFF so a OW airline would be the reasonable way to gnly CX though is available for direct transfer so you would end up with ~ 640000 asia miles.I have no idea though how easy awards are using Asia miles nor the burn rates.
You can indirectly get the points to AA via SPG but the rate is not great-1000 MR points=330 SPG points.if you transfer 20,40 or 60 thousand in 1 transaction to AA from SPG you will get 5000 bonus miles per 20000 points so would end up with~350000 AA miles-burn rate though is much better for awards than QFF though.

Or you could go for diversification and choose a *A airline-NZ,SQ and TG can all be used-there are several who use SQ here and the transfer rate is 1 to 1 so 850000 krisflyer miles.

So you need to research Asia miles and Krisflyer to see if they would suit your travel pattern.Seeing your regular PVG trips possibly CX is the way to go.

 

[sparoz]

I personally like Asia miles as I found it much easier to get tickets and require less points to convert a ticket to the same class, compare to QF. As long as there is no re-issue of the ticket, you can always change the dates of the ticket too. However, once you change it over, there is an expiry date. I am pretty sure it is three years expiry, but you better double check it. If you are looking at travelling to Asia, Europe and US for your whole family, I think you would be using up the points very quickly anyway, so the expiry might not be too much of a concern.

I generally book J though so I can't say it for other classes.

 

[bravoecho1]

Thank you all for your feedback.

Following on from everyone's advice I spoke to our AMEX account manager and he advised that in order to downgrade your card you need to reapply however as neither my wife is working nor the company we ran the business is operating there is no chance of getting a new card.

Without having done a lot of research I have narrowed the partner programs to Singapore and Cathay. Now I need to find out what the redemption rates are on certain trips to determine the best value and also to see if Singapore points expire after a time period (from memory they do but I need to look into it).

 

[cove]

It is easier to get business class seats on SQ. Their points have a life of 3 years.