Last year I received a retention offer on my Citi American Airlines Visa card.

While I wasn’t thrilled with the options, I decided to keep the card open. I then considered calling back to close the card but in the end, never bothered….

The annual fee of $85 has once again came up which means it was time for another call.

Last year I accepted an offer of a $95 statement credit and if I spent $1,000 per month, I’d get 1,000 bonus miles for 16 billing cycles.

This time around I didn’t expect to get a decent retention offer but I always feel that it’s still worth calling in to see what the customer service rep will say….

This call was quick but kind of funny in some ways.

Once I got through a few prompts (acct #, security password etc.), I was connected to a friendly yet kind of strange rep.

After asking my name, he said how it was so nice to hear from me (ummmm ok) and asked what he could do for me.

I mentioned how I was thinking of closing the account. I then got a response of:

“But we’ll miss you if you do that”.

I had to hold myself back from laughing before the rep asked if closing the card had to do with the $85 annual fee. I mentioned how it definitely did…

He then offered some solutions to help with the annual fee in the form of “converting it to a more useful rewards card“.

What could that be?

I was offered to switch to the Citi Double Cash card. With the card I could earn 1% back for making a purchase and 1% more for also paying for the purchases. This card didn’t interest me much and I was then offered a Thank You Card or an AA Gold card which has a lesser fee.

After turning down these offers, the rep asked if I’d still like to go ahead and close the card. I responded that I’ll close it and he answered “as you wish“. LOL

He then mentioned transferring me to a specialist to hear the terms. A moment later he said the specialists were busy but he could finish closing the account.

I decided to ask if it would be better to wait and call back tomorrow to speak with a specialist and this is when I was told that my account doesn’t qualify to speak to one!

So the specialists weren’t really all busy. I guess they had no time to speak with me if there weren’t any other offers for me.

Fair enough- no feelings were hurt.

Account closed… Thinning out my open Citi AA cards is probably a good thing since I plan to apply for more at some point.