ricktoronto

What's left other than hopefully, using it at stores and such to buy things and pay on one statement later?

abraxis

I received the same notice on my Exec card statement. On the second page under "Account News"

wjj

As I stated in an earlier post, I have done quite well with price rewind and trip interruption insurance. Big downgrade for me. As I am flying UA more than AA now, I thought about upgrading my Chase UA Explorer card to the Club card to get UC access and dropping the AA Exec card. But the travel benefits on the Chase UC card are not that good and in reading the UA board, it seems the best bet is the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. Travel benefits are essentially the same as what we are about to lose with the AA Citi cards and with the $300 annual travel credit, the sign up bonus and 1.5/1 redemption opportunity through the UR portal, the card is effectively free, at least for the first several years. Another imminent loss from AA (which is now standard on all airlines it seems) is the inability to use the AC if not flying AA or a OW partner that day. The walk from the ORD G concourse AC over to terminal 1 airside is not very far, so using the AC while flying UA was an option. Same at a number of airports like SNA, DCA, ATL (on DL). The last time I had a trip interruption at ORD (April of this year), the line in the AC stretched from the elevators all the way past the bar, past the food buffet, back to the window. After watching Tiger Woods win the Masters on the bar TV, I gave up and went home. So the benefit of using the AC to effectively deal with disruptions was not there. I made a claim under the trip interruption insurance benefit which was paid in 10 days. That benefit is about to go away. The only benefit left is AC membership at a discount and the ability to let authorized users have domestic AC access. I wonder how long that will last since UA and DL have no such benefit on their cards with Chase and Amex. So I think the best option may be to get the CSR card and put all charges on it and then decide if it is worth keeping the AA Citi Exec card solely for the discounted AC membership with no-charge use by authorized users, even with the downgrade of not letting me use the AC when flying UA. The UA Club card does not seem to be worth it without authorized user access. Anyone using the CSR in a similar manner? I am sitting on about 600K AA miles that are getting hard to use in any reasonable way, so the inability to transfer miles from CSR to AA is not an issue for me.

jcatman

1. Use the Chase Sapphire Reserve for all of your everyday purchases, including travel. The CSR's trip delay / trip cancellation benefits are superior to Barclay's.

2. Keep the AA Executive Card. You get AC membership for yourself, and the ability to be the hero/heroine to your friends and family when you make them authorized users on the card. You'll be flying AA until you use up those 600,000 miles.

3. As an exception to the advice in #1 above, use the AA Executive Card for purchases of appliances, electronics, etc. The Executive Card's extended 2-year warranty kicks in when the manufacturer's original warranty expires, even if that original warranty is under 24 months. That's better than the extended warranty from American Express which will only "match" the manufacturer's original warranty if it is under 24 months.

As for the United Club, only you can decide if guaranteed access to those clubs is worth getting the United Club credit card. Keep in mind that if you reach United MileagePlus Star Alliance Gold status, you can access the domestic United Club if you are flying internationally from that airport.

wjj

Good point, but I use my Costco Citi Visa for that purpose. Especially useful if buying items from Costco where they already double the manufacturers warranty (like TVs) and then the card tacks on another 24 months.

IntFF

And looks all of you forgot that on 4/30/2019 we lost the MC-Plat card 10% mileage refund/back for AA award booking (up to 10K/year).
I manage to book in April 160K miles of awards (all the way thru Dec), half on my card and half on my wife's, and get back 16K miles.

GlobalMatt

True. This also goes for the Red Aviator and Silver of Barclays card.

My wife and I did the exact same thing for our trip to Europe next week. I wonder if they did that feature devaluation by design so that folks like you and I would redeem-dump miles earlier in the year. Who the hell knows what AA has planned for its next tricks...

abraxis

Well, I got the Exec card when I was flying AA for status. Once they went revenue based and I ceased flying them as much, wondered what to do with the card.

At least for the next year, I will be flying Alaska out of SFO T2, the old Virgin gates and destinations. You can use an AK boarding pass for entry into the Admiral's Club once they start requiring a same day boarding pass in November.

So even though the card has been devalued of practically every perk, I may be keeping it for lounge access.

radonc1

The card will now be used solely for lounge access. I would buy my tickets for AA on the card due to the travel insurance (which did not prove to be of value earlie this year when a claim was denied) as well as car rentals. Now those will go on my Chase Ink Preferred card instead since they still have both travel insurance and rental insurance..I fly AA enough to value the lounge access, so I will keep
I cannot imagine that Citi will let these changes occur unless it is their intent to get out of this line of business and this is the first shot of that battle.

ksucats

I am going to start looking to see which card I can move to for my travel needs. It sure adds to my peace of mind when I have used my AA card to book travel. For example, we are going to Ireland in two weeks and I would be worrying about everything that could possibly go wrong until we got there if it wasn't. I am probably going to be booking a cruise for March. My vacation fund won't have the money to pay for it until about November, so not wanting to book by Sept. 22.

I currently have a Marriot, IHG, & HIlton credit card as well as discover. I don't believe any of them come with travel insurance. I will start digging into it and seeing if one of them can be upgraded to one that does because I really don't need or want another credit card.

wingnuthead

Pretty much exactly the same boat! Have the AA Exec, UA Presidential Plus, and just got the Chase Sapphire Reserve and also the Barclays JetBlue plus. I'm sorta semi retired, but no longer care about what airline I fly, and I burned through 3 million AA miles in the past couple of years, as well as about 1M UA. Kept these cards for their benefits and lounge access, which is pretty shabby and crowded these days, but when the whole bunch of us travel, including kids w/significant others, it was nice to have the clubs to go into.

But this is now just ridiculous. The cards have almost zero value other than the Chase SR, which comes with the preferred plus club network. Well, looks like more card pruning is in the offing for me. Wow, just wow

MSP_Monopoly

SpammersAreScum

Citi very recently changed its restriction from "24 months since bonus or close on any personal card" to "48 months ... on same card". So you are good to go if and only if your last bonus or close of a Plat was over 48 months ago; in theory the timing of the Exec close suddenly no longer matters, but personally I'd wait on it anyway just to be sure.

But rather than take my word for it, you would do well to peruse Citi AA cards: General discussion and PUBLIC online offers

Biggie Fries

At the end of the day, I will probably keep this card for club access, but doing away with the travel insurance may change what "keep this card" means. In particular, my past preference was to get some kind of a retention offer to amortize the AF. Such retention offers usually involved some spend, and for this card, such spend was best acquitted by buying plane tickets. But without the travel insurance, it's hard for me to justify such expenditures on this card, especially when the Chase Ink Preferred will pay out in 3x UR points.

So my current thinking -- my AF just posted 12 days ago, so my mind is at fever pitch -- is to cancel and have my spouse apply to keep us going for another year, club-wise. (I.e., calling the bonus miles the amortization of the fee, and taking advantage of the fact that $5,000 in three months [or whatever] is easier to do without buying plane tickets than when you have to make a number every month for a retention offer [especially when that number might be $4K!]).

Dirty times, these.

bosman

AA/Cit's move here was really helpful in that I never previusly really compared what I get with each credit card. In the end, I created a comparison of what each card I own offers and figured out the best cards to use for plane tickets, retail, etc. so now I have an informed plan moving forward vs using the airline card when making purchases on that airline (and buying travel insurance). So a great impetus to create a better plan that will save me $$s (like when not to buy travel insurance from the airline).

Oh, regardng the AA card, I ended up downgraing to the Mile Up from the $99 AF Premium Select. At first I thought this move would cost Citi big $$s, but then realized that most people don't really think about the perks and won't change their cards. Smart FTers, though, will.