I hope this is the proper forum for asking this.

It would be good to know, if you hold various cards, how long you have to wait to re-apply for another promo bonus to be considered if you cancel. I looked for one source with this information and could not find it. This is very useful info for planning when, and if, to cancel.

If this exists in one place, please refer me with a link. Thanks.

This is what I have read so far (please correct if wrong):
1. Citi AAdvantage cards: Can re-apply and be accepted about 18 months following application date for last Citi Aadvantage card, regardless of when you cancel. YMMV.
2. Starwood Amex cards: Apparently their policy has changed (see post by iBleedOrange below).
Here are others that I currently hold and for which I want to know the re-application rules. For many of these you get benefits if you pay to renew, but the bonus if you can cancel and re-apply is much better:

1. Chase Ink Plus/Ink Bold.
2. Chase Hyatt
3. Chase United
4. Club Carlson
5. Hilton HHonors card

Any information is appreciated. Thanks.

Your AMEX personal data is not current. There is a specific thread on this subject .

I see no point in cancelling the Club Carlson if you spend 12K in a year your back at square one in terms of the bonus. Amex has apparently gone to once in a lifetime bonus for same card. I've seen mixed things about Chase.

Thanks, iBleedOrange.

Too bad about Starwood. I suppose it is good to keep one card then.

I don't think I would ever charge 12K/yr on my Club Carlson card.

The big question is whether it is a good idea to cancel that and the Chase cards and re-apply, and if so, when.

What do others here do with these cards, and with what success?

And that thread is:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...etime-usa.html

(in the American Express forum).

There are 4 of those!

2 are from Amex (the bank), so the above applies to them also.

One is the Citi HH Reserve, for which there's little information about churning ability to date. It gives you 2 free weekend night certs that expire in a year, plus Gold status, but no bonus points.

This other one from Citi:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...nors-visa.html

is one of the most frequently-churnable points/miles-earning cards out there. Start by reading that thread's Wikipost.

Great....thanks for the info.

Sorry I missed some of the Wiki's. I was confused re: navigating the forum sites.....getting it now.

So to sum it up, do I have it right?....

Starwood Amex cards: One bonus for Personal, one bonus for Business per lifetime. No renewal bonus so prob. not worth keeping.

Citi Aadvantage: Can churn about once in 18 months (from date of last signup bonus).

Hilton HHonors: Can churn often (annually??), 4 cards.

Chase (eg Ink Plus, Ink Bold, United, Hyatt, etc): Officially, for each card you can only get the signup bonus once, but you may be able to churn after about 2 years (YMMV). The hotel cards give an annual bonus if you renew and pay the fee. The Ink cards do not give annual bonuses for renewal.

So what is the prudent thing to do with the Chase cards ? Ditch them within a year and reapply , or keep them, pay annually, and get the hotel bonuses? Any consensus on this?


Is that all correct information?

What about Club Carlson? Worth keeping for the 40K loyalty bonus, but can it be churned for new 85K signup bonuses?

That's the personal AF-waived-first-year cards. You can churn the business AF-wavied-first-year card several times a year. You can also churn the $400ish AF card (not waived) several times a year, if you don't mind the high AF and the very high spend you have to do quickly (which for many people will definitely require MSing).

Much more often than annually (for the Citi 50k HH Visa for which I provided the thread link above). The theoretical limit is about once every 5 weeks, though that rate would not allow for applying for just about anything else.

The other cards may not be churnable. So it's confusing to ask how often you can churn it while mentioning there are 4 cards, because only 1 of those 4 is known to be churnable.

Thanks for the info!

Wow....you can cancel and reapply every 5 wks and get accepted? That's amazing.

How often can you churn the Citi Aadvantage Business annual fee waived card?

Cancelling has nothing to do with it at Citi (for personal cards). You can reapply without cancelling (though eventually you'll need to cancel to avoid running into "you have too many cards from Citi already").

However, like I said, that's if you're doing nothing much else. That'll generate 5 to 6 pulls per 6 months, and the Citi limit is 6 pulls per 6 months (on whichever bureau or bureaus they pull), so that means to do this at this rate you must pretty much not be doing any other card apps (or credit apps of any kind) concurrently.

That's why I said it's a "theoretical" maximum rate.

However quickly you can apply, get the card, do the required $3k spend, have the miles post, cancel both the card account and the master account (business cards have two accounts, and they both have to be completely cancelled before you can apply again), and verify that the latter has happened. So while you can do this several times a year, I'm not sure how exaclty to calculate a theoretical maximum, since it depends on how quickly they send you the card (which may partly depend on which part of the country you live in?), whether you can always do the $3k spend the first day you get the card, how quickly your statement closes each time (which you can't necessarily control), how quickly you can get verification of the closure of both accounts, etc.

FYI, the Citi HH 50k churn maximum rate is easy to calculate because it doesn't require a cancellation or even completion of your spend before you apply for the next one. So you can be ovelapping a bit (completing your spend on the first card as you're waiting for them to send you the next card). The Citi AA Business churn maximum rate is hard to calculate because it does require everything to be done in the right order: apply, get the card, do the spend, wait for the statement that posts the bonus miles, cancel both accounts, verify that cancellation, and only then repeat.

The Citi application timing rules of no more than 1 card in any 8 day period and no more than 2 cards in any 65 day period are the only clocks that apply to either of these cards; however, the Citi HH 50K card doesn't require cancellation before reapplying, and so these clocks are all that matter, but the Citi AA Business does require cancellation before applying, and so you're not likely to be ready for a new application as soon as these clocks would say you would be.

(The Citi AA personal $95/year-or-less cards have an additional clock, of 12 to 18 to 26 months since you got your last Citi AA personal $95/year-or-less card. I have to say $95/year-or-less because this additional clock does not apply to the $400ish/year-not-waived Citi AA Executive card offers.)

sdsearch, that was VERY useful information!


Thanks a lot for that!

protag.

unfortunately, however, applying for the Citi Exec card say 18 months from your CitiAA personal card DOES reset the clock for non Exec cards. so if one wants to maximize and leave nothing on the table, apply for a Citi personal card first before applying for the Exec.

I don't think Club Carlson and its big bonus has been around long enough to have any real data points. My bet would be to churn the 3 versions of the card and cancel old one. I.e. Apply for whatever version(s) you don't currently have and cancel the version you've had the longest. Personally I will wait until I get my annual fee charged because I think paying the annual fee is a good value for the points I get. (The points take a good deal of time to post, so no getting the points without paying the fee).

because of the free night bonus, I wouldn't want to be without 1 version or another of the card.

As far as Chase, most bonus's are once per lifetime, but from time to time, someone reports getting a bonus if it's been a few years.