A couple of days ago I called Citibank to cancel one of my AA Executive cards since the annual fee was about to come due. As a reminder, last year Citi offered a whopping 100,000 AA miles plus $250 statement credit as a signup bonus for the $450 per year AA Executive card, so many of us now have several of these cards.
Before cancelling the card altogether, I asked about retention offers and was transferred to a retention specialist.
The retention specialist found only one useful retention offer for this card: For 16 statement cycles, I would earn 1000 bonus miles every statement cycle in which I spend $1,000 or more. In other words, if I kept the card for one more year, I could get 12,000 bonus miles. If I kept it more than a year, I could max out the offer at 16,000 bonus miles. An extra 1000 miles a month for $450 per year? No thank you.
The next part of the call was where things got interesting…
I had recently read Travel with Grant’s experience in asking about retention offers on all of his Citi cards in a single phone call (found here). I thought that was a great idea so I asked the specialist if she’d mind going through all of my Citi cards to see if there were any worthwhile retention offers.
And here’s what happened to me:
Citi AA Mastercard: 1000 bonus points per $1000 spent through November (apparently I had already been offered this last July and didn’t capitalize on it).
Citi Executive: Same offer of 1000 bonus points which I will use through April when that annual fee comes due.
Citi Hilton Reserve: This is the best one. 5000 HHonor points for 2k spend in 3 months.
Personally, I hate retention offers that take my mind off of my points strategy but it’s these little promotions that keep accounts topped up and bridge the gap between an extra night, an extra flight etc.
Now to call Chase about my Southwest Business card and copycat Grant…
