Earlier in the year I wrote a post about Citi American Airlines credit card retention bonuses.
For those of you unsure of what a retention bonus is, I’ll explain.
A retention bonus is an offer that the credit card companies make to a card member to keep them from closing their account. The offers could be a lower interest rate, miles, waiving the yearly fee etc.
To get a retention bonus, you (the card holder) call customer service and explain that you want to close your account (or are thinking of closing the account but want to know what offers are available). I always explain how I am getting better offers from other credit cards and mention examples like 3x gas, 2x groceries etc.
Last week I was doing a little credit card maintenance. I was able to open 4 Citi AAdvantage credit cards around a year ago and figured that it was almost time to close some out. Before doing so, I figured that I could squeeze a few thousand more miles out of each card.
I decided to call the Citi Retention Line for three of my cards. It turned out that I had closed one of my cards earlier in the year (I forgot to put it in my cancelled pile) so I was now down to two shots at a bonus offer.
The offers I received (for both cards) were:
- Spend $500 in 3 months and receive 3,000 bonus miles
- Spend $750, get 750 bonus miles for 16 months
It was a no-brainer. I went with option #1 for both cards.
For $1,000 in spending I will earn 7,000 miles. This is a great offer which will earn me 7 miles per dollar!
To reach the Citi Retention Line
- Personal cards, call 800-444-2568
- Business cards, call the customer service number on the back of your card
Another interesting piece of info:
I’ve cancelled credit cards and had annual fees removed many times after the fee had posted to my account. I never knew if there was a set amount of time given to have the fee removed. I usually just make sure to call and cancel (or ask for the fee to be removed) a few days before the bill is due. When accepting my retention bonus terms, I found out that we have 37 days from when the billing cycle ends to call to close the account and have the annual fee removed.
