Any suggestions on what to say to justify a cancellation request when talking to an AmEx retention agent? One of my BizPlat NLL's is on the chopping block and must go, so I'll have to call and cancel.

As customers, we don't really need to justify it, but I'd like to have a reasonable explanation. Why? I know that AmEx says that the number of cards opened and cancelled is a factor in their approval decisions, which is fair enough. I have no idea if the reason for cancelling is also part of that. So, I don't want to take a chance that a seeming trivial reason would be cause to deny a future app.

My go-to reason for cancelling any travel or high-end card has been to say that I just couldn't make as much use of the travel benefits as I'd expected. Anyone and everyone understood that the past few years. That doesn't hold much water these days, especially when I've redeemed the airline fee credit. The Dell, etc. changes don't go into effect until next year, so that doesn't exactly stand up either (but I'll use that one later when other NLL's AF comes due, though I will really miss the Dell credit if it actually does go away).

I'm leaning towards just saying something about the facts that it's very expensive (true), becoming increasingly difficult to make use of the AmEx offers (also true), difficult lounge access, not to mention a wide variation in quality (true), the Indeed and Adobe credits aren't useful to me, I already have Marriott status, and other cards offer no forex fees as well as GE/Precheck/Clear (true). Actually, now that I listed all those out, why did I sign up in the first place .

Anyway, curious how others have handled these calls.