Like many readers, KUKU has multiple Hilton Aspire credit cards. I previously wrote a short post about the Hilton “elevator” strategy, which got quite a bit of attention. With AMEX RAT cracking down again lately—especially on cardholders who abuse airline-fee reimbursements—see this article. Going forward, fewer people may want to hold multiple Aspire or Platinum cards, and some may instead prefer to downgrade and wait for a better upgrade offer.

Normally, every downgrade requires calling in or chatting with customer service and asking directly, which is a hassle. Here I want to share a simple way to quickly “upgrade” an Aspire to a Surpass (formerly Ascend).

One of the biggest benefits of the Surpass is that if you spend 15K in a calendar year, you can earn a Hilton weekend night certificate. With the Aspire, you need to spend 65K to get one additional certificate, though the card already comes with one just for holding it. Downgrading to the Surpass at the beginning of the year can be a good option for people with strong spending capacity.

Prerequisites

  • You have an Aspire card; the number of Aspire cards you hold does not matter
  • You do not currently have a Hilton Surpass
  • Whether or not you have the no fee Hilton card does not matter much

Steps

  • Log in to your AMEX account
  • Select view all credit cards
  • Find Surpass, where you may see the Request an Upgrade option
  • All three of my Hilton Aspire cards were able to “upgrade” to Surpass without any issue
  • Once the “upgrade” goes through, in theory you should still receive a prorated annual-fee refund as usual

Is there any risk?

  • If your card was previously upgraded, or if you accepted a retention offer, do not make changes again within one year after taking that kind of offer, or RAT may come after you
  • If you were mainly using the various credits and now feel they are no longer as useful, wanting to downgrade is perfectly normal in my view

Can you get a bonus for downgrading?

If there is a public “no annual fee version → Surpass upgrade offer” link that everyone can use:

  • Based on how the system appears to be set up right now, Aspire → Surpass should also be eligible for the “upgrade” bonus, while still getting a prorated annual-fee refund. Too good to be true...
  • However, there are very few usable upgrade links available right now, so let’s hope new ones appear

If you find a working upgrade link, feel free to leave us a comment.

Other similar uses

If your AMEX Gold is only the Rose Gold version, then Rose Gold can also be “upgraded” to Gold.

Rose Gold→Gold

Platinum→Gold

I do not have a standard Platinum card, but I suspect this kind of reverse downgrade should work there as well.