Just a few low level but possibly helpful datapoints related to this and other citi cards...
My wife received the annual fee for her Citi AA Visa and we decided to cancel it. Actually have not been using the card for some time. As well, she applied for the Citi Business Visa online today (40k AA offer with $3k spend) and it's pending. At the same time she wanted to re evaluate her having both last year's citi gold Visa with Hilton (which had a $1,500 spend and earned her 50k HH) and a newer Citi Visa from HH which has a picture of cities on it in a sepia tone and is a Signature Visa (which I believe had a $1k spend) and earned her 50k HH also. She had applied for both at different times and got both. Neither has annual fees but both have $5k CR limits and so she wanted to get rid of at least one to have less avail credit with Citi used up on the field.
When we called in to Citi they put us through to an acct specialist who ultimately convinced us to stay with the Citi AA visa and pay its $95 ann fee BUT that we could make 5 regular purchases (of anything at any ammt) in 3 months (almost too easy to even mention) and they would provide a statement credit of $95. Ok no-brainer, we're in for another year on that one!...
For the HH Visa gold, they offered that we get 750 extra HH points per month from using this Citi HH card if we spend that much each month or in any given month. She declined and we closed it. They offered to move the credit limit into the other HH Visa but we said no to this as well.
We also confirmed with both Citi and Hilton that my wife is still Diamond thru til Mar 2014 and that of course to retain it, one needs to spend $40k on the card. If one spends $20k, one has Gold. Obviously we know the HH Amex earned 6x points on things, whereas these Visas only give you 3x.
It is not certain, therefore, if we should ever even bother to think to get the newer HH Visa that people talked about that gives you Gold as long as you have the card. I mean, we wouldn't do that now anyway cuz she's Diamond, but if this were 2014 we could consider it. Then again we will just wait and see what changes may come. I'm not status on HH but I wasnt planning on getting a HH card right now as I am concentrating on other things.
Also we are not sure if we will bother trying to churn these Visas from Citi... I personally had less than perfect luck with my history of Citi churning and am pretty much stuck to keeping the one AA card I have now. They dont really wanna give me another for a while. I wish to allow my wife to remain free of this restriction.