I have been trying to get the citi executive card (trying to convert a citi plat), because I'm 400k miles short from LT plat, I can do about 350k miles on expending next year meaning 2 years of flying will put me over my goal of becoming LT PLAT. However I have been calling citi to convert my existing card and they have been putting me off, saying something about needing to wait for my terms to change.then after 2 months of calling different reps, today they change the card, but they said that I have to wait 45 days in order to receive the card. They said I will have it by December 5th. The letter that Maya writes, it states that you need to have the account open and in good standing by December 1st. Does this mean that my earning of miles will not count for life time status? If this is the case they are going to have a unhappy customer. How is it my fault that they have to wait 45 days in order for me to receive the card.

Does anyone have any answers? Thanks.

You might just want to try applying for a new one. If you get it, cancel the conversion.

My broker at Ameritrade told me that there is an offer that is seldom publicized but that he could get for me. So I am thinking that folks out there could ask Ameritrade yourself for this offer. I believe he said that I needed to open a new account with $250,000 and I could get 30,000 miles immediately posted to my AA account. I didn't go for this offer. I went for the offer that you open a new account with $50,000 and get 25K miles, but they put the first 1/2 in fairly quickly and the other 12.5 K six or more months later. He said he'd work with me to get the first 12.5 K posted before 11/30/11. I think I'll meet the MM status. I have lots of different accounts at Ameritrade but I didn't have a joint account. So we opened that up and it qualified. Only non-retirement accounts qualify I believe, but you can check on that. Hope this news helps some people out!

In my search for more miles, I also talked to a supervisor at Fidelity. I have an open account there. He said that I could open another type of account, say joint account, and he could override the "first time account holders" clause for getting AA miles. However, he couldn't do it in my case because I had previously gotten a mileage offer from them in the past. So check into it deeply before moving money there. And you need to talk to a supervisor to get the override. Good luck!

When did you open your existing Citi card account, month/year?

No need to search the forum when the answer is on AA.com:
http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/el...-guarantee.jsp

Maybe I'm missing the obvious, but where in that link does it say that elites will get a minimum of 500 miles toward MM status post-December 1 for every flight?

No where. I think it is a valid question. However, the elite minimum 500 has always counted as BIS for the purposes of tallying EQM and miles toward sticker upgrades. That would lead me to believe that it would also count as BIS toward MM status. I shot off a PM to AmericanAirlines to find out if that's still the case.

Less than 500 is just that
 

Keep in mind that the 500 mile minimum they give for flights less than 500 miles is your BIS miles PLUS bonus miles. Therefore, you only get the miles you traveled towards MM, not 500 minimum. For those of us flying short segments, it becomes improbable that we will ever get to lifetime gold (even as a PLT with over 500,000 miles already).

Any point in petitioning AA?
 

Do you think a large group of unhappy AAdvantage members petitioning AA to reconsider this change would do any good? Does anyone know who I could write to at AAdvantage to register my feedback on their new plan?

Idon't think it will change things,as this puts AA in line with other carriers.
Additionally, the current program is a non-published benefi.

Well this is misleading when comparing to UA; while they are going to a bis qualification the benefits attained at the million mile mark and beyond are far superior to AA - 2nd tier Lifetime status for 2 people when you reach 1 million, e.g.!

I still think that AA, if still intent on keeping Gold at 1m, Plat at 2m, and not allowing any life ExecPlat should on the other end provide some unique incentive to get to the lifetime marks they do have. As I have said before, they could do something like allow spending to count only up to the number of BIS miles flown each year, this would actually I believe incentivize folks to fly AA more even when they knew they couldn't qualify for the next elite level that year they would be able to get 2x miles by supplementing their flying with spending.

Exactly, GrizShel makes an important point.

AA used to have easiest qualification for lifetime, but also the least benefits from reaching lifetime. Now they are moving towards equally difficult qualification with substantially lower benefits. Not only do you only get 3rd tier status at 1MM, AA doesn't offer UDU.

It's not at all clear to me that United's "Unlimited" Domestic Upgrades are actually a better deal for lowest or mid-tier members than AA's upgrade system, even with the (relatively trivial) cost of 500-mile upgrades.

Further, while it doesn't benefit everyone, for a substantial number of us, the ability to earn MM credit on partner flights is a big deal, although it's not likely to be much help for the majority of domestic-only travelers.

That UA gives mid-tier (of course, with recent changes, I'm not sure WHICH mid-tier *lol*) is a better benefit than AA's, but overall, I'm not sure it's THAT much of a better deal than AA's even with the changes.

If they were going to make further changes, I'd much rather have elite bonus RDM (and class of service, 500-mile minimum and other flight-related bonus miles) count than have credit card spend count.

+1, I just wished that the s*** had hit the fan after I had hit 2MM. I have had an AA account for almost 11 years now. I didn't really start using the thing until '05, so it took me 6 years to attain 1MM. The fact that it will take me 8-16 years to attain 2MM is most disappointing. I hope that our lifetime status carries over in the eventual switch to AAvios points.