I’ve had pretty good success when it comes to credit card retention offers over the years. Whenever a card comes up for an annual fee, I always like to call in to see what offers might be available to me… Even if I don’t have any real desire or intention to keep the card open.
When the annual fee came up for my American Express Platinum Delta ® Business card, I knew that I would be closing it. Besides the random Amex Sync or Small Business Saturday offer, this is a card that I never used. There is no way to justify paying any annual fee, let alone $195 for this card.
I called up American Express and after a brief hold, mentioned how I wanted to close my account. I explained that the annual fee was a problem and asked if there was anything they could offer to help.
Without hesitation, the Amex representative offered me the option to switch to two lower-fee Delta Cards, the Gold Delta SkyMiles card (which has a $95 annual fee) or another card which he didn’t name or know the exact fee for. (I looked online for fun and didn’t notice any Delta Amex card with a fee lower than $95?)
I immediately turned down the option to switch to a lower fee card. I’ve already had the Delta Gold card and wasn’t interested in paying any fees so this option wasn’t for me.
I was next offered to switch to a couple of non-Delta cards which each carried no annual fees. I didn’t even listen to which cards were being offered and said no thanks right away.
I then asked if they ever waive or do something to help with the fee. No offer was made to me when I asked about this.
I went ahead and closed out my account which took another 2 minutes after being read the usual credit card account closing lingo..
Has anyone ever received a retention offer on their American Express Platinum Delta SkyMiles Business card? Just curious!
Related Posts: Retention offers from 2014
- My Citi AA Retention Offer: $10 In Profit + Up to 16,000 Bonus Miles
- My Amex Platinum Card Retention Offer
- Update On My Amex Platinum Retention Offer
- Another Citi AA Retention Offer: What Were My Options
- Turning Down An AA Biz Card Retention Offer
- My Chase Ink Retention Offer
- My Starwood Biz Amex Retention Offer
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David- Did you accept the offer?
Denise- I’m a bit surprised that they didn’t try to get you to switch to another product…
Todd- Did you accept & keep your card open?
Geoff- I’m assuming you accepted?
RNP- Sounds like you got the best offer that I’ve heard about. If you don’t need two Delta cards, why not just close one then?
ALWAYS ask for the retention representatives (Amex calls them something like Member Services) – front line reps are not empowered to give retention offers.
And when you get to the retention folks, specifically ask for their “best offer”. Their job is to offer as little as possible, so don’t waste your time doing the retention dance, just straight up ask for their best offer.
I have yet to fail to get a good retention offer from Amex – always more than makes up for holding the card. And if I have a card, I have it for a reason – to MS the heck out of it. I put $50K on the Plat to get the 20K MQM (and also have the DL Reserve and put $60K on it for the 30K MQM).
Paul- I enjoy doing the “retention dance” to see what the different offers are.
I was offered 15,000 Delta miles and I declined, agent put me on hold for 2 min and came back with $195 annual fee waived, it called loyalty member credit. I accepted the offer even though I really don’t want the card. I have Delta Gold.
15,000 MR’s.
Received 12,500 miles just last week when I called to complain about the raise in fee. The other offer was a $100 statement credit. $25k+ in spend on the card.
I had exactly the opposite experience. Mine came up for renewal in April but was billed in May at new higher rate. Not worth $195 so I called to cancel. All the agent did was point out the benefits. No retention offer of ant kind. Expected them to try to get me to switch to Gold but nothing.
I was offered 15,000 sky miles to renew this card.