When the annual fee posted to the account for my Citi American Airlines credit card, I knew there was something I had to do.
I rarely am willing to pay a credit card’s annual fee and this was especially the case for this card. I can’t say that I see much value in the card making it worth paying $95 to hold onto.
I decided to call the number on the back of my card and find out about a retention offer.
Years back, I remember calling in and if you mentioned the word cancel, some miles would be thrown our way to rethink our decision. I’m not talking a ton of miles but 2,500 miles + for pretty much doing nothing would definitely make me accept and think a bit longer.
More recently, Citi would offer to waive the annual fee and include a bonus of 1,000 miles per month for 18 months when spending $1,000. Definitely nothing to get overly excited about.
So I called in and mentioned I was thinking of closing my card and the rep said the usual oh no, is there any reason why etc… I mentioned how I didn’t want to pay the annual fee so she said she would see if there were any offers to waive it.
In the past this would usually be a brief hold or even a transfer to another representative. But with a few clicks of her computer, I then heard that there were no options to help with the annual fee.
I guess I wasn’t such a valued customer anymore.
I was offered the opportunity to change my card to one without an annual fee, the Bronze Card… I politely declined and asked one more time if there was anything else or someone else to speak to.
The answer was no and my answer was to go ahead and close the account.
Have any of you recently received a retention offer on a Citi American Airlines credit card? If so, please let us know what the offer was.
I called to cancel my AA Platinum card last month when the annual fee posted. I told them I didn’t want to pay the fee, and they kept me on the phone for a half hour trying to persuade me not to cancel. He seemed to think $95 was nothing, and I said I pay several such fees. He said the fee would be credited automatically when I spent $95 in purchases, and it was.
when you call the regular customer service they never offer anything to keep you, when you want to cancel they just normally cancel your card if the no annual fee is turned down, I usually just ask the “cancellation dept”, that’s what I called it and that group or dept usually work with you on keeping you by offering the 18 months for $1000.
I had the same situation last week. They had zero offers for me. In the one year I had the card, I did not receive any bonus offers for spend, etc.. I have the Aviator Red card which has given me bonuses over the last year. I cancelled the Citi AA card.
I haven’t but I was able to convert to the double cash. This work with Barclays so maybe it’ll work with Citi: Tel them the aviator card has the same stuff and they waived your annual fee no reason to keep both cards they’re exactly the same. That competition may convince them to offer you something better.
I was in the same suituation yesterday as I have both the American Airlines Citi platinum and executive cards. As the executive one gets me access to the Admirals Club there is really no need for me to have both cards and pay a $95 annual fee for the platinum card and $495 for the executive card. I called citi to cancel and they offered me 3,000 bonus miles if I spent $500 over the next 2 months on my platinum card. It’s not much but I’ll take the extra miles and be doing my Christmas shopping on my platinum card.
Yes! Just a few weeks ago when i called, I was offered a $95 credit if i made 5 purchases of at least $20 or more. I took it! Sounds like (mostly) free money to me! I have one more $20 purchase to go.