I just received the annual fee on the CitiBusiness AAdvantage Card, opening the letter by chance. This card annoys the hell out of me, and I was all ready to cancel, but I thought it would be best to listen to their retention department to see what they could do to convince me otherwise.
The fee on this card is $75, the reason I dislike the card is simply that for some reason I have a hard time linking it to my Citi profile and therefore it isn’t on Auto-pay, so I actually forgot to pay it once and was hit by a fee, now I open up the mail and see another fee I am not loving things… but I thought the conversation was interesting.
I started out quite sincerely saying that I felt a little ‘meh’ about the card, since I have personal Citi AAdvantage cards that offer the same perks, and therefore this was something of a duplicate. They asked me what I wanted to stick around, and I suggested a fee waiver.
Counter offer of $50 Statement Credit – I declined
After some rambling – 10,000 extra AAdvantage for spending $5,000 in 6 Months – it is worth the fee, but I am keeping an eye on spend right now so I declined
Offered to swap to no fee Citibusiness Thank You card – I declined, with the concern that it might have a signup bonus that I could get if I applied directly for the card, and if I held it I would be waiving that right.
The final piece of information was most interesting to me: I have about 5 weeks to cancel the card after the fee hits for a full refund, but anything up to 6 months they will prorate my fee… so if I take the statement credit of $50 today, and cancel in a few months, I make a net profit should I decide that it just isn’t the right card for me. I had heard of Amex offering this, but didn’t know that Citi did, it is something to think about.
Interesting, I have this card too, and called Friday. I was offered a lower interest rate, which has no value to me. Then the same 10K bonus for 5K spend in 6 months. Didn’t make a final decision. Calling back tomorrow to see if anything better is on offer. I’ll update afterwards.
I was offered the $50 credit also, but canceled because I didn’t want to call back again.
Yeah I think I should have done the same, hardly worth the effort of remembering.