Tagging Miles

Observations from a recent Retention Call to Citi

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Citi AAdvantage Executive

Thought I’d share a short post on some interesting observations from a recent call to Citi.

  • Calling for my wife’s account, we were asked whether Citi could record her voice, to leverage voice recognition for account verification.
  • Retention offers seemed much better than what I was offered earlier in the week. For my wife, she received:
    • 10k Thank You Points (TYP) after $3k spend in 6 months for her Citi Prestige
    • a choice of 15k AAdvantage miles after $5k spend in 3 months, or 5k AAdvantage miles and $100 statement credit after $5k spend in 3 months.

Of course, when it came to my own retention offers, Citi had nothing, zilch, nada! Ok, maybe that’s not the whole story. Asking on two cards, an AAdvantage Executive that I’ve had since April, and a Prestige that I’ve had for just over a year, and the best offer I got was a 0% interest balance transfer (with a whopping 3% fee)! No thanks! I’ve got a little bit on the Citi Executive, but I may give it one more call on the Prestige before cancelling. At this point, the greatest value I see is the enhanced 1.6 cent per TYP when redeeming on American Airlines.

What has your experience been with Citi’s Retention Offers lately?

Interesting Citi AAdvantage Executive Retention Experience

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Citi AAdvantage Executive

So, I happened to call Citi to cancel my most recent AAdvantage Executive Card, and was met with retention offers I hadn’t really expected. Historically the only retention offer I’ve received was “receive 1,000 additional AAdvantage miles for any month where I spend at least $1,000, for the next 16 months.” Today, I received that, plus a few others:

  • Receive 15,000 AAdvantage miles after $5,000 spend in the next 3 months
  • Receive xx,000 (I think 10,000) AAdvantage miles and $100 statement credit after $1,500
  • Another statement credit option, but it was small

My point is: It seems that Citi is starting to expand retention offers, even for very new AAdvantage Executive cards.

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