Originally Posted by
jethro
First time poster so please be gentle...........I have both the Barclay A+ card and the Southwest RR card and am looking for an opinion of what to do. I travel with both and was thinking of closing the AirTran cc. Reason being that Airtran may bring out a new bonus deal when the merger happens and it being only for new members. My other thought was post merger they(AirTran) may have a targeted deal aimed at keeping their existing customers. Thoughts?.............Thanks Jethro
After shareholders of both companies agree to the merger and the feds give their OK (meaning SW is then in management control), SW will give Barclays notice that they are canceling the agreement for Barclays to offer the co-branded Airtran A+ Visa (since Airtran will soon no longer exist as an entity anyway),
Barclays will then contact their A+ Visa customers and tell them of the developments and will try to keep them as Barclays' customers by transitioning them to a different Barclays credit card product (Priceline Visa, Travelocity AMEX, etc).
Chase will not "buy" Barclays' Airtran credit card customer base and offer them a co-branded SW credit card because the two companies have very different credit worthiness standards for issuing credit cards....Chase will not want a portion of A+ Visa customers.
Any targeted offer by SW to keep Airtran customers will probably not be through a credit card offer since many Airtran customers (probably most) don't have an A+ Visa anyway.
My prediction.