How long ago did you chat? If it was more than ~2 weeks before the statement closed & bonus posted, I'd ask again. I say 2 weeks mainly because that's the longest we've heard of it taking anyone to hear from Citi (and that includes waiting on snail mail).

It was around 2 months ago. I didn't think anything about it at the time, as I didn't expect to hear back from AA. I just expected the bonus to post after I met the spend. Only lately heard that people are getting fairly quick responses to the request. Not sure what to do now, as I didn't take any screen shots, don't remember the name of the CSR, etc.

Nothing to lose by trying chat again.

Yes. My reason for slowing down was 90% because of an odd experience that made me fear I was attracting too much attention from Citi and 10% because I am finding it harder to hit the minimum spend 2 x 33 days for H and W plus occasional apps for two others in our circle, The auto-approval is just a small side bonus for me. A little more than that for my wife who hates calling but does it when necessary.

My odd experience was getting a call asking not just "did you apply" but also where (which computer, home or office) did you apply from. Followed by, have you applied for anyone else. The rep noted multiple apps for different people from the same ip address. It spooked me a little. Since then the auto approvals have been a welcome change. As of now, I'm going to stick with 1 app every 65 days for me and one for my wife (and we are spaced almost a month apart, so it ends up being 1 app per month, more or less) mostly because I'm not sure how much minimum spend I can do and want to do, but I can see myself moving to a shorter wait time at least occasionally. I hate to leave points on the table by applying too slowly, and we never know when this might end.

We've seen recently that most chat agents are reasonably competent and can usually at least submit the request for you, but also that there are a few who just plain don't know what they're doing. It sounds like you got one of the second type. I'm guessing your request never made it to the department who could do anything about it. Go ahead and ask again. But do it soon - there's a limit as to how long they'll match an offer. I think it's somewhere around 3-3.5 months after you open it.

With chat being a little less reliable than SM, I've now started recording the dates I received the match for each card. I've always recorded the bonus date, but now this seems to be the only way to know 100% for sure that I did get the match, too.

They will not change the terms or bonus on the offer you applied for. All they will do is add courtesy points.

New one. I received a "congratulations...you've been approved...card is considered open as of today 1/18/19" email. But I have no pending applications, and the last 4 digits quoted in the email are of a card I CLOSED ~10 days ago.

I removed it from my web account, and destroyed the card, so I don't know if it was reopened. Perhaps this will count against my 2/65.

Closed yet another account yesterday by phone and again was completely automated, no CSR involved.

You're one of the lucky ones. I closed a [two-month old] card this morning and had to speak to an agent.

Great news, thanks for bearing it. Would you share a few other details? Envelope or folded? What are the first 3 digits? It has 9 digits, correct? Does it include pictures of a happy family enjoying themselves outdoors?

DP ... 60 to 75 match via SM

DP: HUCA chat matched 60k -> 75k just posted

Wait....what?

All I have in my SM page is the messages already sent and received. No way to send a new one. And I just checked the wiki to see if a workaround had been added, but nothing about SMs there either way.

Pray tell, how did you SM Citi? Or did you do the SM months ago, and the points just posted now?

If we told you, we'd have to kill you.

But you can learn it for yourself, in the wiki of the very first sticky thread (the one with the relevant title) in the Citi/ThankYou forum.

I don't know if it is a regional thing but I never lost SM. When logged in on account page I scroll to bottom, click contact us, click secure message, click send new message.
This match request was sent 2 days ago. Good luck let me know how it goes for you.

At the top of the page, click on Services

Under that click on Credit Card Services

Now, under Card Management, click on Request A Credit Limit Increase

Then, on the left hand side under Need Help?, click on Request Your Card Agreement

Interesting, I believe you are correct. Never knew that it was just amount of time since account opened (regardless of whether subsequently closed). So yes, then there would really seem to be no reason to keep too many of these guys open.

No one in particular. Overzealous phone or chat agent, I suppose. For example, I wouldn't want to have to try to explain why I have 5 - or why I need a 6th one.

Thanks to everyone posting in this thread - success! On Jan 5th I have sent the following secure message to Citi:

I have received no direct response to that SM. Today (January 18th), I received an email from Citi titled "Your AAdvantage® miles have been adjusted" with the following contents:

Before I sent the SM I have already spent the $6000 required for the signup bonus. My first statement hasn't cut yet and this is my first AA card ever.

Good work and welcome to the game.

Going forward take that 2nd $3000 you spent (from $3000-6000) and put it on your next Citi AA card to double your miles from 75k to 150k ;)

Thanks so much for the step by step directions that even I could follow. I read about that a while back, but couldn't get it to work, so I thought it was no longer workable. This time I did each step correctly, and yes, my SM has now been sent. :)

My fear is that Citi has opened a dummy account for my relative so he no longer receives new mailers. :eek: We'll see, but fortunately I have lots of relatives. :D

DP:

2 cards currently open, newer app was in Oct
Tried a "expires Dec 15" 9-digit mailer and got the "information does not match" response
Tried a "expires Dec 30" 9-digit mailer and got instant approval (50+10, which I will SM to 75)
I intend to close the 2 older ones after latest is received and bumped to 75
I have another Dec 30 which I will try end of Feb;

My relative who received one of those notices listing a nonexistent account number subsequently received a mailer. Of course there was only about a week in between, and maybe there is a time lag.

If you spend $3000 per card instead of $6000 you only get 50k miles plus 15k match.

Not sure why everyone is so against spending the full $6k on these current offers. 4.3 miles per dollar for the extra $3000 is a pretty good earn rate.

It is? Compared to 22.7 miles/$ on the first $3000 of your next card?

I suppose it depends on how much spend you can generate without breaking a sweat. Speaking for myself, I sometimes pay 2-3% to make the spend (and even if not paying directly, I give up the 2% cashback I could have gotten charging regular spend on my regular card, which is the same as paying 2%), so I don't do it for small potatoes.

I guess if you have trouble generating $6000 of spend every month then the extra $3000 is not a great deal. I've been doing a card every month and maxing out the offers, but fortunately I can do it for <1%. I look at it as an extra biz class international ticket every year.

Note that the "teams" of many churners consist of more than one person.

FYI, the source of a lot of this confusion is FAKO scores. FICO uses average age of accounts. FAKO (like credit karma) uses average age of open accounts. The good news is that banks use FICO, not FAKO.

You miss the point. It is always better for an earning rate at 22 miles per $1 than 4.5 miles per $1. Math does not lie. The ability to generate the spend is Irrelevant.

Like other said, until the mailer dries up, the additional spend at a much Inferior rare simply does not make sense when there is a far better option at hand.

As to how many extra international trip(s) each year, that is also not very relevant unless you are solely depending on AA miles. Then it is actually not a happy situation to be in.

Many of folks dont rely on AA miles as the sole source for their travels but almost all of us would treat this as "get it while the getting is good", as well as to get the most bang out of the bucks spend.

For that matter, many of us are getting UR pts at 5 per $1 spend rate outside the sign up bonuses - UR pts definitely are more valuable than AA miles given its transferrability. Also dont forget the poor availability of AA award seats on the TATL routes, unless of course you also do not mind to pay an additional few hundreds to redeem on BA flights. The poor comparison of its TPAC routes was mitigated by CX in the past, but CX is getting much tougher since Q2 of 2018, plus now with the famous CX F mistake fares, one can pretty much write the 2019 CX TPAC premium cabins redemption off.

Even with the regional redemption - try to find a CX HKG-Australia / New Zealand in business, you would need to bet your luck by looking at a week to 10 days before departure for example. you also would not find ANY on QF. So the AA miles are dead in water.

Meanwhile TG has availability almost every day. Even SQ has lots of availability, provided you book thru Aeroplan which of course means AMEX MR pts transfer.

Not to mention to those folks who have to book 330 days out due to their work / family obligations, Aeroplan is 365 days out, without routing restriction plus 2 stopovers 1 destination on a R./T redemption.

Having a lot of UR and MR pts at hand is a good measure. Therefore extra spend could be better used for these purposes.

Huh? Mailer applications are limited to 2 every 65 days. IF the ability to generate spend is unlimited, one does not need to choose between taking the secondary bonus and taking the primary bonus of the next card. One can do both.

The ability to generate spend does matter, because you are limited in the amount of cards you can get.

If you can only get 1 card per month but you can generate over $6k of spend per month, it's obviously better to get 81k miles/month than 68k miles/month.

Of course if you could get a 2nd card per month then splitting the spend and getting 136k miles would be even better, but, once you've maxed out the number of cards and put $3k on each, it makes sense to use any remaining spend to get the 2nd part of the bonus.

I can only get 1 per 33 days or so (no spouse, not interested in business cards) so this is my situation

Not to take this too off topic, but the ability to generate spend is very relevant since it doesn't impact me also spending on other cards (and I think we all agree it's best to spread it around). The cost of generating those 5x points with Chase outside of certain sales is higher than generating ~4.3x miles with Citi. Also taking into account that it costs less even at non-saver points levels to book with AA than United (easiest airline for those of us not in a coastal hub city) I personally value those extra miles. I appreciate that some people do not though. Being on the east coast it's probably more convenient for you to travel TATL, but other than my last trip to Scotland I tend to fly TPAC. I've also been very successful finding premium saver and partner awards, in fact I am headed to Japan with one of my friends next month on JAL J and JAL F.

It all comes down to what various folks value, and I find value in AAdvantage miles with plans to take Aadvantage until the well dries up. I definitely preferred getting the full bonus for $3k spend vs $6k, but I just view it as a penance for all of us raping and pillaging their cards for so long.

BTW, I agree having multiple points currencies is best (I have more UR than I can spend right now)... except AMEX, I really don't like them.

DP, one new mailer today. 60K miles, $3K spend/90 days

Between myself and friends, we've received 3 60k/3k (not 50k+10k) mailers within the past week. 3/15 expiration. Hopefully this signals the end of the ##k+##k mailers.