Once upon a time, the Citi Prestige was my favorite credit card of all.
Years passed by, and through devaluation after crippling devaluation, I kept it.
Although the credit card had become all but useless for travel (due to the annihilation of its travel benefits), I thought I had found one good reason to keep the card: The fact that it could earn 5X Thank You points on restaurants while earning $5 off all Postmates orders over $25.
My Membership Year Spending
Indeed, last year I “used the hell out of the card,” spending about $7,000 on restaurants and Postmates, and spending an additional $5,000 on travel.
With $12,000 in spending, I thought there was an excellent chance Citi would consider me a valuable card member, the kind who did exactly what they wanted (spent big bucks on restaurants), the kind that they would easily want to extend a retention offer to.
I mean, surely they wouldn’t want to lose me as a customer, right?
Call Results: My Surprising Retention Offer For The Citi Prestige Credit Card (2020)
I called Citi customer service at the number on the back of the card. I quickly got a representative, told her I was trying to determine if I should keep the card, and asked her if there were perhaps any fee-waivers or retention offers available to me to help me make my decision.
Immediately she came back and said, “Are you stating you want to cancel this card today? If so, I can cancel this card right now”.
I replied, “No, as I mentioned, my annual fee has come due and I’m trying to determine if I should keep the card for another year”.
“Sir, there are no offers for you. But, I’m happy to cancel this card for you right now”.
So there it was, my surprising retention offer for the Citi Prestige was that there was no retention offer!
I could see this was playing out eerily similar to my call results for the AT&T Access More card.
I decided to ask what my downgrade options were, and she read through the predictable line of products including the Citi Preferred, Citi Premier (which I already held), and the Citi Rewards+. I asked if I could downgrade to the Citi Double Cash card, and she said, “yes”.
I told her I’d think it over and call Citi back.
The New Retention Offer Normal?
I’m getting the feeling, especially due to the tightening of the credit markets during the pandemic, that easy retention offers are a thing of the past.
I’ve also seen data points that banks have gotten “hip to the game” and are now making offers only to people who are in fact going to cancel.
It’s very possible that I could have gotten a retention offer had I pressed on and she happened to transfer me to a “retention specialist” or whatever, but it’s also possible she could have just immediately cancelled my card (I’ve heard from sources that Citi can be “trigger-happy” on the cancellations, especially now).
The Bottom-Line: Call Results: My Surprising Retention Offer For The Citi Prestige Credit Card (2020)
So what did I do?
Well, I went and created a trusty excel spreadsheet for one final analysis to see if there was any justification for keeping the Prestige, especially since I already had a Citi Premier card that earned 3X Thank You points on restaurants while also earning $5 off all Postmates orders over $25.
With no retention offer on the Prestige, things weren’t looking good.
Click here for my next post on what I ended up doing with the Citi Prestige and why
