miles4sheli

Need some advice on CitiBusiness AAdvantage Cards. Back in January our business had 2 cards, mine + another employee. The old CitiBusiness AAdvantage rule used to be a total of 3 cards per business, so I took a chance and another employee applied for a 3rd card for the business, and was declined. I immediately cancelled one of the cards and sent a reconsideration letter. I also called the reconsideration line to no avail. I was first told the denial was because our business had “the maximum number of accounts” that Citi will issue to a business. Then, even after the first was cancelled and that was no longer the case, I was given various reasons for denial. They insinuated that it was because the company had previous cards in the past that had been cancelled and interpreted “maximum number of accounts” to mean over time and not to be speaking of the present. Based on prior experience, I feel that’s not the case. I should add this was the first time we have ever been denied a card where we were unsuccessful in its appeal.

After reading the posts about the 2 different account numbers, I logged in to the old accounts and saw the old credit limits, etc., still visible. I called to ensure both corporate and individual account numbers were fully cancelled, and even though they assured me they had been, asked for letters to be sent. The phone rep also mentioned something about CitiBusiness reporting closures only to Dunn & Bradstreet. The letters arrived and confirm both have been cancelled.

We want to reapply for a CitiBusiness AAdvantage Card. I’m assuming that another employee (me) with the only remaining business card won’t hinder the new application. Since closing the previous card, the other employee who will be applying has received 3 emails from AAdvantage with targeted offers for a CitiBusiness AAdvantage Card. The offers are 10,000 miles less miles than the best-50K-offer on this Thread (30K miles after $750, then 10K more miles after $5K spent in 6 months). So, $2,750 more would need to be spent for 10,000 less miles than the best offer available. I am assuming we will be approved for the targeted offers, but am not so sure if we should go with the better --- untargeted --- offers on this Thread after the way we were treated by the those who responded to our letter. (Has anyone ever been denied who was sent a targeted offer?)

My questions are:
1)Should we try the better offer or should we play it safe with the targeted offer?
2)Also, we can wait on the application to give more time for all of the closures/old credit limits to clear (although I assume they already had since most accounts were cancelled years ago, but one never knows and the new confirmation letters were sent in recent weeks). The last application was more than 95 days ago and the 2nd card was cancelled the same day. There is now only 1 business card for the business. Are we safe to apply now, or should we wait?

THANKS!

UPDATE:
Re-applied after 105 days. At the end of the process, told to call. They put us on hold for nearly 20 minutes, then informed us that the business has had too many AAdvantage sign-up bonuses in the past (although it's not that many, compared to the experiences of others on these boards:>). This is the first time we've ever received the "call us" note where the application was not approved. This may be for several reasons: while we waited the appropriate length from the last application, we had contacted the reconsideration dept several times, by phone and mail, and perhaps that factored in. I also recently requested the closure letters for Corporate and Individual accounts, so perhaps there was something lagging there, too. Not exactly sure, but the agent didn't ask us for any info to clarify for her. She just flat-out denied it because of the past cards, but did say she tried to get her supervisor to approve it. I did get the feeling that the decision was in their hands. Slightly surprised, considering it was a targeted offer. (UPDATE 5/21: Another targeted offer arrived via Email -- the 4th one for the business. The language now reads, "This MasterCard offer is not available to you if you already have a CitiBusiness/AAdvantage card account. Additionally, this offer is valid only for first time CB/AA World MC cardmembers.....")