OK. I received the card on Wednesday and paid just on $4k of a large bill I'm otherwise putting to Amex, in order to expedite the status uplift. (I am aware that will throttle my earn for the first month and it's a reasonable tradeoff for my purposes.) That transaction posted overnight and I received my invitation to select a status airline this morning. I've chosen Aeroplan for obvious reasons. (That's likely where most of my ongoing earning will go too.)
Some questions for those who've held this for a while, some of which may have been answered in the past but I don't recall seeing definitively when I've reviewed this thread over time:
- Per my reading of the terms, the points are only swept to Star Alliance Rewards once per cycle. Is that correct? Is it after statement issue, or payment, or...?
- If so for #1, is there a way to track the earning in the current cycle, within the HSBC online portal? I found something that potentially might be it, but it's showing zero at the moment and it's not 100% clear it's the right place.
- What's the deal with the 6-months-interest-free on the participating airlines? Does it activate automatically when you make a transaction? If you pay the remainder, does it sequester the Star Alliance purchases and allocate the payments appropriately? If you have direct debit set to pay the balance in full, does it carve-out the Star Alliance purchases or just ignore the free period?
- I think this is the first time I've received a credit card that doesn't, as far as I can tell, have a signature panel. Even the Amex Plat with the metal card and numbers on the reverse, has a signature panel. Is this because they expect all transactions to go through without a signature? Has anyone tried in the US, where tap or chip-PIN aren't ubiquitous yet?