March 2015 Credit Card Retention Offers and Cancellations

I wanted to group all of my credit card moves in one post.  Actually this post was originally about my recent Citi retention offers, I figure I’ll expand the post to make it all in one post.

My 2nd Barclays US Air card or so I thought

I applied for my 2nd US Air card yesterday.  I had gotten one at the end of December, and figure since they won’t be offering this card anymore, that they’d be giving away this card like candy.  After I submitted the application, I checked the status online, and it said the application was DECLINED.  I called up reconsideration at 866-408-4064 and asked them the status of my app.  The CSR told me I already had a US Airways card, so the system rejected it.  I told her I wanted one for business charges since they didn’t offer a business version of this card.  She understood my plea but didn’t budge.  She said I had just gotten one, so they weren’t going to give me another.  I then asked her if it pulled my credit, and she told me NO.  So that was a wash.  I was glad I didn’t waste a pull on nothing.

By the way, if you want 50,000 AA miles, you should definitely apply for this card THIS WEEK.  I’m going to apply for my wife since she’s never had that card.  Also, if you don’t have a US Air number, don’t worry about it.  Barlcays can still generate you one even though you can’t sign up for a number anymore.  You can Google a working link.

Barclays Arrival cancellation

Back in January, I had downgraded my Arrival+ card to the free version because I didn’t want to pay the annual fee on the card.  I still had 200K points though, so I booked and cancelled 2 hotels so I could redeem my points out.  I waited until last week to finally cancel the free version so I could set myself up to sign up for the Arrival+ in 6 months or so.  I left the card with ~1,000 in points, which I count as collateral damage.

Citi AAdvantage Executive Card

My Citi AA Executive card’s annual fee was coming up soon, and there was no way in hell I was going to pay $450 to keep the card.  I had read on FT that some people were getting a retention offer of a $450 statement credit if you spent $5K for the next 3 months.  I was hoping I got that offer, but that’s not what I got.  The rep offered me a $100 statement credit and an extra 1,500 miles if I spent $1,500 for the next 3 months.  That was a horrible offer and so I asked him if there was a $450 statement credit offer.  He said no there wasn’t.  He offered to downgrade the card to the $95 AAdvantage card.  I told him I already had that card, so no thanks.  I then asked him if I could downgrade to the free Citi Double Cashback card (1% on purchase and 1% when you pay back).  He put me on hold to see if it was possible and came back after a couple of minutes to tell me it was possible.  SCORE!  Since this card has the highest credit line out of my 5 Citi cards and since the DC card has no signup bonus, this was a win in my book.  I’m going to switch my Buxx loads from Arrival to Citi now since 1) Citi doesn’t charge cash advance on Buxx loads and 2) I have too many Arrival miles and can easily switch back if needed.

Citi Hilton Reserve

After I was done with the Exec conversion, I had asked him if there were any offers on my other Citi cards – 2 Diamonds, Hilton Reserve, Thank You Premier, Aadvantge Platinum.  The only card that had an offer was on my Hilton Reserve of get an extra 750 points for every $750 spend for the next 16 months.  Since Hilton points are worth so little, I didn’t even bother to work out the math and told him no thanks.  I was sad my TY Premiere had no offer.  Some people were getting 3X points for 6 months.  That would have been nice.  However, I had gotten a retention offer only 4 months ago, so that’s why there was no offer this time around.

Chase Priority Club Mastercard

This would have been my 3rd year with the card.  The card is nice in that you pay the $49 annual fee every year and it gives you 1 free night at ANY Priority Club hotel, which we’ve mostly used at expensive Intercontinental hotels.  Chase used to only give you the signup bonus once PER LIFETIME, however some 6 months ago, they loosened that policy to now say: “This bonus offer is available to you as long as you have not received a new cardmember bonus for this product in the past 24 months.”  My strategy was to cancel the card now and maybe sign up again for it a year from now.  Granted I could sign up sooner than that since it has been 36 months since I’ve gotten the bonus, but I hear Chase isn’t too happy with customers who get new cards just for their bonus.  I’m not sure how they can say I’m abusing the sign-on bonus a year from now since what if I just wanted the card again because I’m starting to stay at PC hotels again?

When I called to cancel the card, I was surprised the 1st line didn’t send me to the retentions group.  She then tried to sell me pretty hard on the card and its benefits.  She blabbed about how the card gave me 5X at PC hotels, 2X on dining etc and 1X everywhere.  I told her my Hilton card got 10X at Hilton and 3X everywhere.  She laughably asked, “But is that on top of your hotel stay points?”  Of course it’s on my top of my stay points!  It works the same was as your lousy card!  She did remind me of the 10% rebate on redeemed points, which I will only be slightly sad to see go.  Lastly, she did give me a spend bonus, but when I heard $5,000 of spend, my mind blacked out and I forgot what the bonus was.  Clearly the bonus wasn’t large enough for me to put $5K of manufactured spend on it.  By the way, they actually had already deposited the annual night cert into my account, and I even redeemed it already (I don’t think you have to redeem right away in case you’re worried about them taking it away.)