Check out our Top Rewards Cards to boost your points earning and travel more!
When annual fee time hits, Citi cards often attract retention offers of varying appeal. An alternate option is to downgrade or convert the card to another Citi product. This will not earn sign-up bonuses however will keep the credit line active and provide access to potentially lucrative card benefits, an occasionally earn a small bonus offer. Compared to other banks, Citi allows conversion to a fairly wide variety of cards.
The process is:
- Call Citi to cancel the card.
- Consider any retention offers.
- Inquire about downgrade options. Encourage the agent to hunt around.
- If you accept the offer, the conversion will take 51 days in which you can later call to stop the conversion.
- Make sure the agent puts in the annual fee credit, if applicable, since the original card will be active for two more months.
Over the past year I have converted AA Platinum Visa (2), Hilton Reserve (2) and Hilton Visa Signature, the most recent being today.
The current options agents have found and tested in their system on my calls:
- Dividend
- ThankYou Preferred
- CashReturns
- Diamond Preferred
- Simplicity
- AA Gold ($50 annual fee, may only work with AA cards)
- Hilton Visa Signature (works with non-Hilton cards)
- Expedia (this card is no longer publicly available, and though listed in the agent’s system, she could not get this to process today)
Most of these cards can optionally be issued as MasterCard or Visa, regardless of original card.
Dividend cards are attractive for quarterly 5% cashback categories. Annual cashback is capped at $300 BUT that can all be earned in one quarter. A conversion today could earn the $300 cashback from Q3/Q4 and reset again next year. I currently have two Dividend cards and both earned the $300 this past Q1 for drug stores. Cashback is in the form of a paper check that you request online. Dividend cards rarely have attractive sign-up bonuses so this can be a good way to obtain them.
ThankYou points are now more attractive with the addition of several airline transfer partners. I have 3 of these cards from prior sign-up bonuses and conversions and there are constant targeted 5x-10x cashback offers in popular categories. A typical offer is quarterly 5x at grocery stores (capped at 2,500 bonus points which excludes base 1x earning, so it really is a 4x bonus capped at $625 spend). These are targeted by account so there is no way to guarantee you will be targeted or that these offers will continue.
For those who push the envelope, presumably you can get a retention offer ahead of annual fee, meet it and collect the bonus, then convert. And with that 51-day conversion window and the annual fee already credited, it may be possible to cancel the downgrade and keep the original card, though I like my Dividends so haven’t tested it.
Readers, what are your Citi conversion experiences?
Check Out Our: Top Rewards Cards ¦ Newsletter ¦ Twitter ¦ Facebook ¦ Instagram
[…] remember reading this post a while back from Rapid Travel Chai which said that it could be possible to downgrade to a Citi […]
[…] can have multiple Dividend cards and get multiple $300/year. I currently have 3 accounts. See my Citi Downgrade Cards for $300 Cashback a Year for […]
[…] cash back per year, but you can even switch among AA, Hilton, Thank You and other cards, see my recent post for the current options. Doctor of Credit reports that Double Cash will become a conversion option […]
Great stuff here…….
[…] Downgrading instead of cancelling Instead of cancelling their Citi Exec card, has anyone tried to downgrade it and still got AF credited/refunded? This article seems to suggest this approach. Citi downgrade cards for $300 cashback […]
[…] learned previously from Rapid Travel Chai that you can make a product change on your Citibank credit cards and decided to try it myself. My […]
[…] Preferred and ThankYou cards, none of which are transfer eligible. Since Citi is pretty flexible at converting cards I thought I would try to be creative to get a transfer-eligible card with no credit inquiry. Not […]
@HikerT – that would make sense for one of those 1st/2nd month situations, perhaps some requirement that the account be open X months before conversion like the Amex 13-month rule for moving credit out of an account. Will be interesting to try when those Exec accounts still open hit the first year.
@Ramzi, the Citi Executive card cannot be downgraded, at least that was what I was told when I tried to downgrade it.
@Ramzi and @RTC, I have 2 Citi AA Exec cards that I plan on canceling/downgrading. I already have 1 Citi Dividend card that I maxed out in Q1 this year. If the calendar for Q1 2015 looks good, I might convert in December since it took almost 2 months last time.
Do you know if the Citi Executive can be downgraded?
@Ramzi – I don’t see why it should not be possible. The question presumably is getting the card, earning the bonus, and canceling/downgrading to get the annual fee refunded. Most reports of that situation seem to be very low profile via secure message rather than calling in and calling attention to the account. Citi seems to be anything goes but I would be a bit nervous about testing this. If you try, I am all ears on your report.
A few years back, I downgraded one of my AA Platinums to AA Bronze with $0 annual fee (and not a single benefit, so it just sits in a drawer). Thoughts on whether this is still offered?
@Lauren – I have not gotten that one as an option for at least the past year. I did push on a no annual fee AA option and even the supervisor could only turn up the Gold. Citi Forward is another that is gone, and one I really wish I had gotten when it existed with the 5x dining. Thanks for the data point.