I had a very successful year adding lots of miles to my accounts in 2011.
It was probably my best year ever!
There were so many great credit card offers available & I took advantage of many of them.
I also reached one of my goals: Lifetime Status on American Airlines!
(I wrote about it here)
I tried to remember all of the cards that I signed up for in 2011. I probably left a couple out!
Here are the cards that I signed up for with bonus miles earned:
- Citi American Airlines Card (4 cards)– 75,000 miles= 300,000 miles
- Amex Gold– 75,000 points + 40,000 added as mistake= 115,000 points
- Amex Gold Biz– 75,000 points
- Amex JetBlue Card– 25,000 miles
- Capital One Venture Card– 100,000 miles match
- Chase Sapphire Card– 50,000 + 50,000 bonus bump*=100,000
- Chase Priority Club– 60,000 points
That’s 775,000 miles earned just from credit card sign up bonuses!
I hope that the offers keep coming in 2012. I am not sure that I will be able to top my earnings from last year but I plan to give it a shot!
*Bonus Bump= A better bonus was being offered for this card so I sent a message to Chase and they increased my bonus to match it.
Great questions! I think the answers could be a whole post.
When a card is up for a fee I call the customer service line and mention how I am thinking of closing the card. I tell them that I just don’t use the card much anymore or that there are better offers (ex. 3x pts for gas, 5x pts for groceries on other cards) out there.
If I want to keep the card open, I ask if they could waive the fee or if there are any offers to help me out.
For retention bonuses, these have mostly applied to Citi American Air cards. I’ll call before the fee comes up and say that I want to close my card. 90% of the time they will say how they want to keep your business and see what offers you have. The offer can be something like 3,000 miles for making 5 charges or spending $5K in 3 months to earn 10,000 bonus miles.
If you have more questions, send me an e-mail to michaelwtravels@gmail.com.
What exactly do you say to get the fees removed and can you explain more about retention bonuses? I have mixed results with customer service reps.
In recent years many of the premium offers have been through Chase. I’ve closed or lowered limits on current cards to get new cards approved.
I don’t pay the fees. For Citi, I call up and get the fee removed for making a few purchases and then try for a retention bonus before closing the card for good.
Getting a rewards flight can be tricky. I’ve had pretty good luck getting my flights. I try to be a bit flexible with dates and where I am looking to go.
I just used most of my Capital One points for my upcoming trip to Barbados. When everything is done, I should have a free trip (air & hotel) from my wife and I each getting a Venture card!
I tried this myself and it seems like alot of the cards are through Chase. I had to agree to cancel one of the cards in order for them to ok the application even though I have phenomenal credit and use the cards alot??? Do you have much difficulty getting the flights you want?? I currently have SW and AA that I use for those flights. Haven’t tried other non airline cards. Doesnt it cost a fortune in fees to keep each card up?? Have heard that Capital one venture sounds great to get all the miles then you can’t get the flights….true??
that works???
If you mean misspelling my name on a card application, I did get a card approved doing that. However I am not sure that is what did the trick.
4 aa citi card at 75k miles all in your name?
Yes they all were in my name. I did purposely misspell my name for one of the apps though.