Originally Posted by
jmdeng
And for both the Explorer card and the Chase Sapphire Preferred (another no foreign transaction fee card), there's no annual fee for the first year, so one could/would just cancel after one year and reapply, all while keeping the old Plus card untouched with the long credit history. BTW, if the old card is still used, it might be beneficial to send Chase a Secure Message when the annual fee pops up and say that you aren't happy with the annual fee and that you're wondering if they could offset it somehow for being a long time customer. They might pleasantly surprise.
That's a good suggestion, apply and use the card for the first year (without annual fee). You are right that the card company has some discretion to reduce the annual fee or give some incentives. Last year, I called AMEX and said I wanted to cancel my AMEX Gold card and the agent gave me 7500 reward points.