Originally Posted by
sdsearch
Welcome to FlyerTalk, Captivated.
If you also have a Citi card, you can cut the AF in about half on the Barclay AA card by downgrading to the Blue (you'll keep earning 1 mile/$ and you'll keep the 0% forex; you'll lose the checked bag and priority boarding benefits and the 10% rebate on redemptions, but a Citi Plat card will give you all those). So ask about downgrading to Blue. For some people, that is what triggers the offer for waiver of the AF, and if it doesn't you've still saved $35 or whatever if they do agree to downgrade you.
Or, if you don't care about 1 mile/$ spent or about 0% forex, you can ask to downgrade to the no-AF version just to keep the card alive for another day.
Citi AAdvantage Plat card is 0% Forex fee effective late Nov.
The off-line chip capability on the Barclays card is over-rated because the Europeans realize that they lose a lot of business should their systems insist to use offline chip processing as the only method. Now you hardly need the offline chip even buying tickets at the automated machines in countries where in the past only the offline chip would work. This year out of 3 trips in Europe, we only used the offline chip capability ONCE to pay the parking. We could easily use a few Euros for the same.