Diners Club cards - can you get good use in Australia

Hi all,

I'm thinking about signing up for a Diners Club card for the specific purpose of earning miles to migrate into Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) which I can then transfer to American Airlines AAdvantage program (20,000 SPG points = 25,000 AA miles).

I'm keen to get feedback on the community's experience with Diners Club cards and how prevalent acceptance of this card is across restaurants, shops, cafes, hotels and online.  I'd be grateful for your experience and views as to whether the Diners Club cards are worth their annual fee (currently I'm looking at $295 p/a to avail of the best earning opportunity).

Thanks,

Jack

It's accepted at a reasonable number of places, supermarkets, post office, hotels, some restaurants but not as many as Amex... You can add it to paypal as a discover card :)

The big problem with the card/account is their portal to view transactions/points and transfer points is awful, and some bad T&C such as if you are late with a payment they won't award that months points etc..  If you have the patients to deal with the issues you can earn a decent number of points out of it... 

The Diners Card has significantly less acceptance than Amex but is good for flights, major supermarkets, Post Office, hotel chains (bonus points with IHG), Myer, David Jones, Harvey Norman, Amazon, Cabcharge amongst others. I was also able to pay my professional subscriptions. Ironically restaurants are quite patchy.

I haven't set up my Diners as a PayPal card as I had heard there is often a currency conversion via US$ but this information may be out of date.

Personally, I think the effective 0.78 American and Alaska miles per $ via SPG quite enticing for the Mastercard alone. It is an added bonus when this is bumped up to 1.875 per $ on the Diners

I still have a Platinum Edge Amex which I use at supermarkets for groceries and giftcards (I find this pays for itself with free flight and statement credits) and a Business Accelerator Amex for when Amex is accepted and Diners isn't (again this pays for itself with statement credits).