UPDATE:
Originally Posted by
sdsearch
Citi rejecting business signup bonus based on personal open/close
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I'm 28 or 29 months since my last
business AA closure, but I got my new business AA card this week, and then noticed
on the paperwork that came with CitiBusiness AA card (
not one of the separate mailings) it says:
Our records show that you are not eligible for the bonus offer based on a recent opening or closure of your Citi card(s).
After activating, I called the number of the back of my card, and the agent said they saw no signup offer on my account. I then asked to speak to a supervisor, and explained that the offer said only "bonus miles are not available if you have had any
CitiBusiness / AAdvantage card opened or closed in the past 24 months", and that it was at least 28 months since I closed my last CitiBusiness card, so I should be eligible. The agent said he was opening a case for some department (AAdvantage miles department or something like that?) and that either they'll send me a letter within 2 to 3 weeks or call if they need a copy of the signup offer terms. He said it was likely it would be resolved in my favor based on what I had told him.
It kinda sounds like someone misprogrammed a Citi computer to check
all Citi AA cards, not just
CitiBusiness AA cards, opened/closed in the past 24 months.
Well, there's more than just computers confused at Citi.
So they did send me a letter, and all it did was state the general rule that no bonus if cards of the same "product type" were opened or close in the past 24 months. Then they gave a number to call if I had questions, but it was not a number for whichever department this issue was supposedly referred to, it was just the same number that's on the back of my card.
Then when I called and talked to a front-line agent, I explained my situation, and after I finished the explanation, i realized I'd been disconnected.
So I called back again, this time explaining a supervisor had led to that letter being sent, go transferred to a supervisor, but then after I explained my situation, I once again realized I'd been disconnected.
(Was this a Citi technical issue, or were they hanging up on me because they didn't want to listen to my explanation?
)
So then I gave up on phone calls, and started from scratch with Secured Messaging. The first reply I got was once again just the standard policy of no bonus if same "product type" was opened or close in the past 24 months.
I replied to that explaining that what mattered was the
definition of "product type", and pointed out that personal application T&Cs explicitly exclude the business card from the 24-month language, and that business application T&Cs mention
only business cards in the 24-month language, and that I hadn't opened or closed a business card in the previous 24 months. And so why is part of Citi claiming that I violated the "same product type" rule when the application T&Cs say personal and business cards are different "product types"?
Finally, the agent who replied to that followup SM said that I'd closed a business card early in 2015 but that was outside the 24-month window, so this agent is going to
manually give me the 60000 bonus miles once they find (after checking every 30 days) that I've completed my $3000 spend. ^ No mention of exactly why I'd been denied, but the menion of the closing of the business card early in 2015 makes me wonder whether they counted my personal card closings in 2016 against me,
or if maybe they had counted months
horribly badly and counted my 28 or 29 months earlier initially as if it were within the 24 month window?!?
Anyway, it's resolved now ^, but boy did it seem like hard work getting there!