Category: Credit Cards

A recent One Mile at a Time blog post reports that American Express has changed the rules for applications for their business credit cards. They have added a new requirement of a minimum $1000 annual revenue for the business.

If you read farther down into the blog post, you will find that $1000 of projected annual revenue may qualify…in other words, a company with zero revenue may still qualify if the owner thinks annual will reach $1000 at some (undefined) time.

The fastest way to get a big pile of airline miles and hotel points is by applying for credit cards. Some credit cards offer 25,000, 50,000 or even more frequent-flyer miles or hotel points just for applying and spending some money on the card.

But the different banks that offer such cards have some arcane rules. This blog post from MileValue.com is a very good starting point for learning what you need to do to get your miles and points.

I have several Citi AAdvantage credit cards, some with an $95 annual fee and some fee-free. The annual fee came due on one of my American Airlines cards, and I didn’t really see a reason to keep the card, so last evening I phoned in and said I wanted to close the account.

The reason for closing is that I didn’t want to pay the annual fee.

I was transferred to a “Retention Specialist”, a very pleasant American-sounding lady whose job it is to incentivize me to keep the account open.

She offered to credit my account for the full $95 amount of the annual fee, if I would spend at least $95 on the card in the next 30 days. I agreed, she read some legally-required text, and that card was set.

Then I asked her to look at my other Citi cards and tell me what “retention bonuses” I could get for keeping each open. For two of the airline cards with no annual fee, the deal was 3000 free frequent-flyer miles if I spend $500 within 3 months. I accepted the offer for both cards.

For the last card, also no-annual-fee, the offer was $100 statement credit if I spend $3000 in 6 months. I accepted that offer, but may not actually ever achieve the required spend. If not there is no penalty.

The Retention Specialist was happy and I was happy. In just a few minutes she was able to keep 5 accounts from being closed, which is sure to help her meet her numbers. I was happy because I’m on track to get 6000 American Airlines airline miles for almost no effort.