ChiCityFlyer

Good advice. I applied for the sw chase and will hear back in a week or two. I have too many chase cards.....

TropicalTripper

Maybe it's just me, but for a thread with "churning" in the title I don't see much emphasis on the repeat aspect of churning, so thanks for bringing this up Sharka. That's not to say that there isn't some useful info being exchanged.

Citi put their foot down on churning with the AA branded cards around 2009 and I didn't realize it was still possible to churn with them, even though the wait time between cards might be longer now. Between around 2007-2009 I racked up about 500,000 AA miles from churning without paying a single annual fee. Initially I was churning with the MasterCard and later I added the Visa and AMEX into the mix. I had all three cards in circulation as frequently as possible. The bonus per sign-ups were anywhere from 20,000 to 30,000 at the time and I averaged 25k per card. I tracked everything with Outlook reminders to make sure I hit the appropriate spending on the card on the first statement, paid, cancelled, and applied for the same card after the appropriate waiting period (I forget how long, perhaps 2-3 months).

Through it all, my credit score was never adversely affected and I received all of the cards I applied for. I did occasionally get rejection letters, but I was always able to get the decision turned around by calling or emailing Citibank. I felt like I was constantly on the phone cancelling cards. First I'd get the person in the Indian call center who would always transfer me to the "retention department" in the U.S. where they'd make fabulous offers of double miles, no annual fee, one-time bonuses. My wife always chuckled at me trying to get out of these sales pitches. Of course getting another sign-up bonus down the road was more AAdvantageous. During this time these miles also counted towards AA million miler status so I'm a little over halfway there despite the fact that I rarely fly AA. Now only actual flight miles on AA and Oneworld count.

Around 2009, Citi revised their policies to eliminate churning. I followed it on the AA FT thread and after it became clear churning was over, I stopped following the issue and attempting to churn. I'm really interested in getting back into it, even if the wait between applications is longer. What would be really useful is a guideline for how much time must wait after canceling the card and applying for the next one. Since the banks clearly don't share this info, perhaps those of you in the know could share.

I'm primarily interested in miles on UA, DL, AA, US, and possibly BA or other alliance members with good offers. I'm interested in hotel points for chain hotels as well. I live in Argentina for work now so it could be a little more difficult for me to hit spending minimums because I use my AMEX Platinum card for spending out of the U.S. since there's no annual fee. Nevertheless I do a fair amount of online purchasing where the charges are processed in the U.S.

Thanks for enduring my monologue. I guess my main point is that we could use a sticky to track churning in terms of what banks allow it and what are the minimum wait times between cards.