I’ve been hearing from a lot of people that Citi is very generous when it comes to retention bonuses. If you’re considering canceling a credit card that you have with Citibank (or in my case, I just wanted to see if I could get some extra points for free), you should definitely try giving them a call and letting them know that you’re planning on canceling your credit card but would like to first find out if they have any retention bonus offers to persuade you to keep the card.
I’ve been thinking of canceling my Citi Executive AAdvantage World MasterCard that gave me 100,000 AAdvantage points, because it’s a new card and it’s bringing down the average age of my credit score which can adversely affect my credit score. I called Citi and asked if they had any bonuses for me. I wasn’t actually going to cancel the card quite yet as I already paid for the $450 annual fee ($250 after the $200 statement credit) and I’m planning on keeping the card for its perks, such as: Free access to the Admirals Club Lounges, and free checked bags on AA flights.
Citi was very quick to acknowledge that they wanted to keep me as a cardmember and would be willing to offer me 1,000 bonus AAdvantage points every month for 16 months when I complete $1,000 spend in a month. Now, I thought I could’ve held out for more points but I didn’t really care too much about working the system, so I accepted the offer, and with Amazon Payments, it should be pretty easy to collect a potential 32,000 bonus AAdvantage points over the next 16 months. Again, I don’t plan to keep the card that long but I wanted to experiment with retention bonuses and attempting to receive bonus points with my card over the next 10 months until my annual fee comes up again and I cancel the card.
For a direct line to the Citi retention department, try: 800-444-2568 (Retention Department)
So if you have a Citi card, you should definitely try your luck and see what kind of bonus they may be willing to offer you. And hey, you’ve got nothing to lose, so try it with any bank you have 1 or more credit cards with and comment below with any success or failures and I’ll put together a list of best retention offers from each bank!