BoA AAA Member Rewards Visa - Moving to Comenity Capital Bank (soon Bread Financial)
 

Just got a letter in the mail that my much beloved BoA AAA Member Rewards Visa will be getting auto converted to Comenity AAA Travel Advantage Visa coming October 2022. Not happy about this since as a BoA Preferred Rewards member I have been getting a better return on this card than through the BoA direct branded travel cards.

New Card Rates show as follows:
5% cash back on gas - Max of $350 cash back per calendar year ($7,000 in spend)
3% cash back on grocery store, restaurant, and travel (including AAA)
1% cash back on other purchases

Current BoA rates with Boa Preferred Rewards Platinum Honors level have been:
5.25% cash back on AAA purchases and travel
3.5% cash back on gas, grocery, drugstore and wholesale clubs

I just recently even did a product change on my BoA Premium Rewards Visa which now looks like a bad choice.

Found some more info that was there all along if I had been paying more attention. Of note is that Comenity Capital Bank is being rebranded as Bread Financial. So this is going to get confusing for some. At any rate, AAA announced back in late July 2022 that Bread Financial was to take over their credit card portfolio. The changes noted above are part of that. It is still unclear what benefits/ earning the upcoming AAA Daily Advantage Visa Credit Card will have vs. the AAA Travel Advantage Visa Credit Card mentioned in the original post above.

I didn't get the letter, but got a pop-up when I logged on today. Agree that this is a big loss as aside from the reduction in category earning (which can't be matched by any other card as the Cash Rewards cards have a monthly cap AND fx fees - I'm abroad more than half the year), I was also converting to AAA vouchers for an additional 40% bump in point value (and then using AAA to book flights with the vouchers). Comenity seems to indicate this "bonus" will be reduced to 5% when redeeming with AAA.

Was there anything in the letter about product changing to something else at BA? I have no desire to be with Comenity/Bread. Anything about last day to redeem rewards? Need to action that ASAP and either close this card or product switch. (the pop-up only gave the very basic information)

Aggravating as this makes me reconsider my whole BofA Premium Rewards set-up.

There was no mention in the letter about an option to convert to a different BoA card - guessing the agreement is the sell off of the whole lot. Regarding redeeming rewards, the letter says that "Any AAA Member Rewards points earned will automatically transfer to your new AAA Travel Advantage credit card." What it doesn't detail is how points would be handled for outstanding purchases before the statement has closed. My guess is that if I had $100 at say a wholesale club, when that closes on the statement at Comenity/Bread where there is no bonus in that category I would only get 1 point per $. Similarly, any transactions closed out at Comenity are certainly not likely to get the Preferred Rewards bonus.

Although this is more at the hands of AAA (likely not BoA's choice) it is giving me an opportunity to scale back significantly at BoA. I have never found them to be very good at much of anything other than a lucrative points scheme for those willing to jump through a lot of hoops and park large sums of investments with them. The most egregious example is that even as a Platinum Honors member, they still want to charge $3 for an ACH transfer from a checking account to another institution. Unfortunately my oldest open credit card (by quite a few years) is with them so I am not sure I am willing to completely break all ties. Luckily it is a no fee cash back card so I could leave it open and in the sock drawer.

Agreed. I was never completely pleased with the way they operate, BUT I had got to a point where I was comfortable putting just about everything on one of my BofA cards. The AAA card earning effectively 7.35% on travel was enough for me to ditch my Amex Platinum for flights and most of my hotel cards (I kept my Hilton Aspire as it pays for itself without much spend). 4.9% on grocery and warehouse stores was sufficient for me to ditch my Costco Citi card and Amex card I was using for grocery. That left me with a bit of "fomo" on dining spend at 4.9% (using the Premium Rewards card) as I valued the 4x on my gold amex slightly more....but it wasn't worth keeping another card just for that. Loss of the AAA bonus on top of the preferred rewards brings that down to 4.9 on travel, 3.5 on dining and 2.625 on grocery and warehouse (as there's nothing without fx fees and caps that gets more than the base 1.5 points on those categories).

Call BoA. They can’t call you to solicit. I had to ‘open’ a new card account but I was offered a series of different options. After my new account was opened, I could move my existing credit line to the new card.

I'm very confused.

I got the AAA Visa Rewards card in 2002 with BofA, and last year they notified me it'd be converted to a US Bank Visa card. This took place earlier this year (February, I think). The conversion was seamless. Did AAA only convert some cards at the time and now they're doing the rest to another bank?

"AAA/CAA is a federation of regional clubs" Perhaps your club has made a separate deal with a different issuer or at a different time.

I was living in Monterey CA when I got the card. I've since moved to Raleigh. I suppose the card would've been associated with the CA franchise in that area but I don't remember the card having any markings specific to it, just the AAA logo.

Now you are making me want to go look. Because I got no letter about a conversion.

Exactly this. I can't recall the other institution, but AAA had 2 main issuers as of about a year ago. When you enter an AAA site the first thing it usually does is prompt for your zip code. Depending on the State/ Region the "AAA card" that showed up would correspond to the one in that region. From the more recent press releases, it appears that they may be going all in with Comenity across all States. Not sure on that though.

I think the new rewards structure is great and I am looking forward to this card. I hope it is available in my area.

Yes, Northern California to North Carolina is two different AAA clubs. North Carolina has recently been acquired by Auto Club Group (which is based in Detroit). The other two big AAA groups are based in San Franciwsco area and in Los Angeles area. The three seem to be splitting up the remaining clubs (Auto Club Group has acquired Colorado and NC/SC recently). I worked at Auto Club Group for awhile in '19-'20 on the insurance side...interesting business that I just couldn't get my head around.