Happy

All cards that advertised as No Spending Limits, are "non-reporting" cards.

For Mastercard, they are World Class, and World Class Elite cards, and they are not limited to AA cards. For example, the Premier Elite card and Diamond Preferred card from Citi, are World Mastercard class and dont report limit.

For Visa, it is the Signature Visa card. The Platinum Visa is a grey area - it seems some banks treat it as No Spending Limit, some banks treat it the opposite. It is less clear-cut like the classification of the Mastercard.

All you need is to look at your credit report and see how some cards the credit limit is IDENTICAL to the spending of the last month when you used it.

Another FYI, for No Spending Limit cards, you still have a credit limit, but you can go OVER that credit limit in the course of a billing cycle on purchases, (even by a large portion), as long as you pay back the "Over the limit" amount before statement date, you are good. This does not apply to the Cash Advance Limit which in many cases, are far LESS than the credit limit for the purchases. I hope most understand the difference between the Credit Line and the Cash Advance Limit.

JoeJetplane

So is it as simple as:

Email Customer Service

Topic: Account - Other

Subject: Cancel Credit Card

Email: <Email Address>

Message:

Please close the account for Mastercard XXXX YYYY ZZZZ XXXX Exp xx/yy


----

And they will close it, no call back and no questions, and no haggling with counteroffers?

If so, a lot of time can be saved with this.... (on both sides.)

mrosson

Yeah, it's that simple. All you need to provide is the last four digits of the card, actually. They've never haggled. It might help to add the words "effective immediately".

Marathon Man

I use Citi MC Gold and Plat for AA mileage earning. Having done the citi MC churn a lot of times for AA miles, I learned the following truths:

1) call to lower your limit on card (1). The reason is because Citi gives each user an allowance of available credit. Say mine is $10k. That would mean if a card has a $9,000 limit on it--and they often do when you have had it a while, you could only get a new card (2) with $1,000 limit on it.

2) OK that may be fine but even as Citi MC lets you charge OVER your limit as long as you pay it back in 30 days along with your min payment (or in our cases, all of your bal) for that mount, you still would rather not really like your CC report to show that you always charge way over the limit. And while your history may be positive over all, it would. Sure, sometimes it would be ok to be over and have that show up--because after all, you always remain current, but not on EVERYTHING and not every month. And personally, I charge a lot more than $1,000. So, ask them to lower card (1) to say $5,000. Now card (2) can also have up to that amount.

3) By consolidating you carry over the existence and history of card (1) to (2) and therefore create a new account number that can generate a new 100,000 yearly mileage earning cap (at least for non-elite AA members who use the Citi MC for those mile earnings), and you avoid or rather prolong the annual fee out ever more months into the future. Your CC report takes no or less of any type of 'hit' and the only crux is to have to remember to change any bill pays and keep track of things you may return to a store, etc. And I would use these cards you churn for regular stuff in life between changes anyway. Anyone here who is JUST churning and not even really using the card too is screwing things up, I think.

4) I have found that if I call to do the lower limit thing AND the consolidate thing in one call, it takes a long time for the CSRs I have dealt with to do all this. But if I make two short calls it's actually been faster over all for me! So lower the limit on card (1) on day one and do the consolidate on day 2. Others may have had different experiences...

5) No 'system' or seemingly regular set of self-create automation and predictable approach should be used when doing all this. If you do the same things with limits, cards, dates and times, amounts or anything else, I find that banks and marketing people can and will find ways to black ball you. My solution to this is to change it up often. For example, with the CC limit lowering, choose $4,000 one time, $6,500 another instead of doing 5 and 5 every time you do it. For the consolidation, don't like time yourself to call every 2 months on the 15th... change the dates, wait an extra couple weeks, skip a churn and give back to the Gods, and stuff like that.

6) emailing may work but sometimes they make you call because security have discovered that people often divorce and cancel one anther's cards without real permission. Besides, emailing may not generate a reply with a named CSR and it may appear to ;generated' or automated to their liking.

7) check your CC report often, and if possible, do so with Citi's Identify Theft Monitor. If anything, doing more business with them makes you look good.

8) I forget what 8 was for

sdsearch

Oh, if this is why you're lowering the limt, it's totally unnecessary. If they can only give you $1000 or $2000 limit on a new card, they'll offer you the chance (by phone and/or by letter) to move some limit from another card to the new card, right after the new card is approved.

Even though maybe I would like to eliminate that phone call, after comparing it to the trouble I had with consolidation (they kicked it up to another department, as I read elsewhere here they're required to do, but then got the details mixed up, so sent me a letter in snail mail that I needed to call before the consolidation could be done, and that letter took over a week to reach me), answering their call about whether you want to transfer limits is a comparative piece of cake.

Besides, how much are you going to spend on the new card? In my case, I'm going to spend at most only a bit over $750 the first month, so if it's an "unlimited spend" card and my credit limit isn't going to show up on my credit report (see the post by Happy a few messages before this one), I might as well just leave it at $1000 or especially $2000 on the new card, right? (If it's an "unlimited spend" card, I presume I'm not going to have a problem with big authorizations just because my credit limit is low.)

(In my case, they've always been giving me $2000, not $1000. And some other posts here claim that's the lowest that Citi now gives, tho I guess it could very with the individual's credit history?)

JoeJetplane

Marathon Man, Thanks very much for sharing. Got some questions I can't help to ask...
What are you using the Citi MC Gold for? That is only 15K miles per app, while the Citi Amex Plat is 25K. Or are you using it for something else?

If you cancel a cards without moving the limit, does the limit on the cancelled card count against you, and could effect approval/denial of future apps?

I agree doing real business with Citi is a great play. However, Citi's Identity Monitor is $13/month, thus over $150/year. I think it comes free with the "Citi Platinum Amex" (not the AAdvantage Plat Amex) which has an annual fee of $125/year (waived the first year, so I guess you could get it for free for a year for someone really bold.) I know the app-o-rama folks on on fat-wallet pay around $150/year for credit reporting services that give them bumpage, but I also understand Citi's Id Mon is no good for bumpage. Do you use Citi ID Mon?

Thanks,

MichaelColey

If you're using actual spending on the Citi AAdvantage card to earn AAdvantage miles, you're missing the boat. Look at an SPG Amex instead. You earn 1 Starpoint per $1 spent and can transfer chunks of 20k Starpoints to get 25k AAdvantage miles, with no annual mileage earning cap (even without status). You effectively earn 1.25 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent.

The only place were the Citi AAdvantage card (or at least some of them, like the business one) has an advantage is for actual spending at AA, where you earn 2 miles per dollar.

UA Fan

there is another adv with citi - you can redeem domestic flights for 17.5K.

UA Fan

In my experience they will mention some BS we know you have a choice of credit card companies...but to better assist please call...

mrosson

There is a link to Citi Identity Monitor out there for $4.95/month. I think I found it on fatwallet. It's supposed to be for employees only but they let anyone signup on it. If you do a Google search you should have no problem finding it.

broadwayblue

How does the Citi Identity Monitor stack up against the competition?

mrosson

I've never tried any other service, but I recommend it. You get all 3 reports and all 3 scores, updated daily. ^

broadwayblue

Really? For some reason I thought you only get scores once per month. I can cancel at any time, right? If so, sounds like there's not much to lose.

mrosson

I thought I read daily somewhere...maybe it is monthly, I'm not sure. But yeah, you can cancel anytime. So it's not a bad deal.

broadwayblue

Fair enough. I think I'll give it a shot. Worst case, I'm out $5.

Just found this from the Citi site:

How often can I view an updated credit report and scores?

Every 30 days. A link titled "Get your updated credit report and scores now" will appear on the Member Overview page when the report is available.