garykung

I have to give you A+ for effort.

However, AFAICT, cobranded cards are difficult to get their AFs waived because the cobrand extract portions of the AF as well, depending on the cobrand agreement. So by waiving your fees, the issuers will have to pay out of pocket.

Vitaforce

Thank you. When my ISP increased my rate by $20 per month, I called 3 different times and received 3 different retention promotions, each one ironically progressively better. Reminded me of going to a car dealership and haggling the price of a car. Perhaps the next 3 Chase reps will each have a different promotion.

Vitaforce

To all the naysayers---I won!

I was able to communicate with a Chase representative who obviously wanted to create a win-win situation, and made an intelligent decision by offering me a statement credit in the amount of the annual fee, most likely based on my years of being a customer and how much I charge annually on the card. Kudos to Chase!

lainys

I kept mine for the second year because they offered a $70 statement credit to offset the $69 AF. Used it only to pay for companion fee taxes. Effectively they paid me $1 to keep my SWA Credit Card open another year. 3rd year no offer so I canceled.

Critterlynn

Well good for you. Now what is your strategy going forward? Its unlikely they will give this credit every year. Whay happens then? Keeping this card long term makes very little sense when you do have to pay that fee. Especially when points are used for things like magazines and gift cards. But congratulations on your huge win and proving all us naysayers wrong.

Beachchaser

If you are pif and not going for cp citi double cash is the better option after the msr is most scenarios

Beachchaser

P2 very good question, I am the cardholder on the csr and p2 is the cardholder on the rr premier card. It makes sense for us as p2 rarely flys without me so we still get the most of pps and avoid the $75 auth user annual fee on the csr.

Beachchaser

Tbh flyertalk and reddit are the oddballs who can have 6 cards in their wallets and know which card to use for each purchase from $0.39 to $1081 based upon highest rewards earning value. Most of the public either thinks credit equals debt, has 6 cards that are maxed or Carrie's balances, or has 1 card they pay in full monthly that they pilot everything on.

EAJuggalo

You should have three cards and an installment loan to maximize your credit score. A closed credit card will stay on your credit report for 10 years. If this is your only card and no debt, you do not have "An extremely high credit score." It is virtually impossible to get a score over 800 without an installment loan on your report.

sdsearch

Did you actually read the article?

The article doesn't say having multiple credit cards hurts your credit score, it just says it can hurt your credit score. But someone else surely has an article which rightly says you can also hurt your credit score just with one credit.

The article starts out:

"

• Having a lot of credit cards can hurt your credit score if the total amount you owe on them exceeds 30% of your credit limit.
• Holding numerous credit cards also hurts your credit score if that causes you to pay late, or if you've opened too many accounts in too short a time.

"

Actually, your credit score goes down if your statement balance on any credit card (that reports to credit bureaus) exceeds 30% of your credit limit on that card.

So you can have that problem with just one card!

Meanwhile, if you fastidiously pay the full statement amount each pay date, and keep every card below 30% credit limit, and have a long credit history, having many cards (most of them unused every month) hurts not a single bit.

I have close to 20 open personal cards (plus half a dozen open business cards), but only half a dozen to a dozen of them get charges in a given month. At least half a dozen are rarely used, just used enough to keep them open. Many are hotel or airline cards that I use only when with that hotel chain or buying tickets on that airline.

And yet my score is above 800, in the "exceptional" category, simply because despite all those cards, I've never had a late payment (that made it to a credit report) in my life, and for over a dozen years now I've never exceeded 30% credit limit on any personal credit card. (I have gotten closer to the credit limit on business cards that don't report bureaus, but since they don't report to credit bureaus it doesn't matter in those cases.)

So it depends how you use those many cards. Yes, some people get many cards to get lots of credit and then use it, and that's expensive, and not good for your credit report.

But if you get lots of cards just to earn lots of different kinds of miles and points and to earn at better rates on buying this or that, and yet don't spend any more than you would if you were living on cash, and pay every statement balance in full by the payment due date, and never carry a balance, and you've been doing this for decades (and have cards kept open for decades to prove that), that's actually great for your credit report, because it shows that no matter how many cards you get and how much credit limit you get, you treat them all extremely responsibly.

sdsearch

The biggest negative impact to your credit score will be 10 years from now when the closed card drops off of your credit report. Until then, you have evidence on your report of a long credit history. If, by then, you have another card that you've held for 10 years by that point, you will have new evidence of a fairly long credit history.

So that's the big way in which opening a new no-annual fee card and holding it "forever" will help "mitigate" the effect of closing your 20-year-old or (next year) 21-year-old card.

Having said that, having no cards on your credit report for a month or two (a new card can take a couple cycles to show up, while the cancelled card may show cancelled much faster perhaps) will not look good. So I would strongly suggest that you consider keeping the SWA card open at least one more year (what's 21 vs 20 years of AFs?), and not be overly swayed by your emotional reaction to how you think the bank is treating you by not necessarily offering a retention bonus.

But you should also probably call and ask (nicely) about a retention bonus at least once a week or so for a little while, just to see if anything changes. And don't try to let the perfect be the enemy of the good: ie, if they offer you any retention bonus of any sort, consider it even if it's not what you'd most hoped for, because that may the only time they offer you anything.

I'm not sure about Chase retention requests, specifically, but at most banks what you want to suggest is that you're "considering cancelling" because of the annual fee, not that you "want to cancel". Ie, you don't want to give them any excuse for the canceling the card (because you used the wrong phrasing). But you can't explicitly ask for "retention bonuses" at most banks either. Just phrase it as something like "do you have any offers to get me to reconsider cancelling?".

You may also want to do separate calls where you ask whether there's any card you can either downgrade to or upgrade to, and if they say yes, find out which card, and then do some research on it yourself to see if it might be worth it. (Some newer Southwest cards, for example, may have a better annual Southwest points bonus relative to the annual fee, or some annual credit, or something like that. But you first need to find out if there are any downgrade or upgrade paths for your card at all.)

Vitaforce

Thank you for the educational dissertation.

Vitaforce

As noted in a previous post, a wise Chase representative created a win-win situation by offering me a statement credit equal to the annual fee. I don't plan on having 20 cards like you mentioned in your previous post, just maybe 2 or 3 at the most, all with no annual fee. Since I am going to keep the SWA card one more year now, do you think the Chase Freedom Unlimited is a good no-annual fee "forever" card to have? I'm not into keeping track of bonus categories and things like that.

Monetarily, it's probably savvy to have a different credit card for each merchant or purchase situation, but I don't want to worry about a plethora of credit cards that presents more of a risk for being lost/stolen/compromised and also remembering when to use which credit card for each type or purchase.

smmrfld

You don't learn or take cues from others easily, do you? Your response was rude and unnecessary yet not surprising.at all, sadly.

ursine1

This was all over $69?