Downgrading Amex BRG

[Flanmann]

I'm going to be hitting my annual fee on my Biz Rewards Gold soon,and I'm looking to figure out the best card to downgrade to in order to keep points. I don't want another MR card, because I'm about to start house/mortgage hunting, and I don't want the extra hard pull. I want to downgrade to a no annual fee card that has either no bonus or a crap bonus that I won't feel bad about not getting. Thoughts? Thanks!

 

[ed1chandler]

Clarify: You say you want to downgrade and keep your points, but you don't want another MR card. If you have some other MR card already, that's great. If not, you definitely want to keep one ... at least in a sock drawer ... just to give those points somewhere to live. My suggestion would probably be the Blue for Business.

 

[Flanmann]

Clarify: You say you want to downgrade and keep your points, but you don't want another MR card. If you have some other MR card already, that's great. If not, you definitely want to keep one ... at least in a sock drawer ... just to give those points somewhere to live. My suggestion would probably be the Blue for Business.

Sorry, what I meant is that I don't have another MR card, and would prefer to just convert the BRG.

 

[ed1chandler]

Others may know the "what you can convert to what" rules, but my suggestion would still be the Blue for Business. It's fairly underrated IMHO. It gets 1.3x MR on all spend, gets you access to OPEN, and gives you a free place to park your MR.

 

[raenye]

But if it's a charge card you won't be able to change it to a revolver.

 

[ed1chandler]

... and that's the kind of "still up past midnight with no coffee" thinking that's starting to escape me. D'oh! Yeah, you may be hosed on that one then.

As for the mortgage-hunting effect of a single credit pull -- probably negligible. (i.e. If you've already got 27 inquiries in the last year, one more ain't gonna hurt. Likewise, if you've got none, that one probably isn't going to be the tipping point.) I've AORed my way through a refi and an auto loan with no sweat.

 

[jd13]

I'll be in this same boat in the next couple months but I can get a new card as needed. Have a little under 100k MRs I need to park until another big offer pops up.

 

[jd13]

As an update to this thread, wanted to add that my BCP came up for the annual fee at the end of March. I called to product change to the Amex Everyday no fee version card. Request was denied because one must stay within the same type of product: cash back, MRs, etc. Ultimately I downgraded to the no fee blue cash version. I do not want to close it because I only have two cards remaining with Amex that date back to my initial card opening 10+ years ago, this being one of them. Sucks to have an Amex slot taken up that is not serving a purpose.

Looks like I will have to suck it up and apply for a MR card when my BRG fee comes up soon. Hopefully a better offer on something else pops up.