78. Score Bonus Points and Waived Fees: The Art of the Credit Card Retention Call with Dr. Suzy Spadafora

Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devon Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started.

Hello everybody, and welcome back to the podcast. It is often said that the points travel hobby is a marathon, not a sprint. For many of us, part of that marathon includes accumulating some or perhaps many rewards credit cards over time. Whether you're applying for new credit cards to boost your points balances with generous welcome bonuses, expand the category bonuses available to you, or just to earn points or miles in a more niche program, at some point you might realize you have more credit cards than you can fully take advantage of. 

Additionally, as annual fees on some rewards credit cards rise and the benefits that they offer potentially decrease, it's wise to re-evaluate which cards continue to deserve a spot in your wallet and which ones no longer make sense for you to hang on to, especially if they're ones that carry a substantial annual fee. 

But before you go and cancel a points-earning credit card for good, there's something you need to know about that your credit card issuer is not going out of its way to tell you, which is that you may be eligible for an extra bonus to keep that card open. That's exactly what we're going to be diving into on today's episode. 

I've invited my friends and points enthusiast, Dr. Suzy Spadafora, back to the podcast to talk all about credit card retention offers. We cover what these are, what forms they can come in, when and how to ask your credit card issuer for one, and we discuss common mistakes that you'll want to avoid to ensure that you're getting the best deal possible. Get ready to take notes because you won't want to miss the great tips Suzy offers on how to make the most of credit card retention offers. Please enjoy this conversation.

Devon: Hey Suzy, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here today.

Suzy: Well, thanks for having me back again, Devon. Looking forward to it. 

Devon: I am as well because I know that we're going to have such a great and useful conversation today. One thing that I'm curious to hear from you, first of all, is can you just remind me how long have you been in the points and miles world and how many rewards credit cards do you have open right now? 

Suzy: So officially it's been since 2003 that I opened my first points and miles card, which was a Marriott card. But I really started hitting it hard in 2016 when I started to have the wanderlust because my kids were going to be easier to travel with. They were getting to the point where you didn't have to bring diaper bags and strollers with you everywhere. 

But as far as opening cards, since 2016, I have probably opened over 30 cards at this point. My husband, my player two, has opened about 25 cards. Currently I have 20 open. I just closed one two days ago trying to get a retention offer. But anyway, that didn't go over the way I wanted to. But anyway, that's where I am now. I have quite a few open. Fortunately, certain apps like Travel Freely help me keep organized enough so that I can stay on top of all of these and stay organized. 

Devon: Yeah, absolutely. So of the rewards credit cards that you currently do have open, which ones are your favorites and the ones that you are finding that you get the most value out of? Which of the rewards credit cards, if any, out of those 25, do you find that right now you're getting the least value from? 

Suzy: So probably one of my favorites is going to be the American Express Platinum Personal Card. That's because even though it has a $695 annual fee, I still end up being able to squeeze probably close to $1,200 worth of value from it. That one, for the last few years, I've renewed over and over again just because the Amex chat boxes convinced me to keep it open with some of the things that they offer me to keep it open. 

Another one that I like, and this is partially because it's my anchor card. It's the one that I opened in 2003. Even though I did a product change from Marriott to the Ritz-Carlton card, Ritz-Carlton card is one of my favorites. Two reasons.

Number one is I like that 85,000 point Marriott certificate that you get each time to have a nice weekend somewhere. The other thing about it is the priority pass that allows unlimited people in with you. Because when I've done girls' trips, I can get up to who knows how many. I have like four people with me, and they all come into the priority pass lounge with me. I'm just sad that they took away the restaurants. 

However, now that they're starting to expand the Chase lounges, I went to the one in Boston and that was really, really nice. So I enjoyed that. I don't need a Chase Sapphire Reserve because of the fact that this overlaps with a lot of the stuff that the Chase Sapphire Reserve benefits were giving me. So I think those two are among my favorite cards.

Least useful cards, nowadays, probably the Delta Platinum Amex, especially since they brought up the fee to $350 this year. That one is one that I always have to think hard about whether I'm going to keep open. Also since Delta, the earning rate of only 1X, one sky peso, and redeeming those sky pesos, you really don't get much value for those.

Then there are other cards. I have like, for example, the Choice Hotel cards. That one, I'm on the fence whether or not to close it, but it does give me I think 10,000 Choice points, which is good for a hotel night. That's useful if you just need to hang your hat somewhere for the night, if you're transiting through a city or if you need to stay in an airport hotel before you go somewhere. So that's another one that's like not very useful. But if the bank can convince me to keep it open, I can easily be convinced.

Devon: Yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about what that might look like in a minute in the conversation. But the reason that I was curious about how many cards you have open right now, which ones you are personally finding the most value out of and which ones are maybe not quite so valuable to you is because I think as your time in this hobby increases, you're really likely to accumulate multiple credit cards. You've mentioned that over your time in this hobby, you've opened over 30 cards.

I've probably opened about the same number. I think we both have the mid-20s of cards still open. But especially over years and years and years, sometimes what happens is that cards that initially were really, really useful or really, really valuable don't continue to be. Whether that can be because your travel patterns change, your priorities change, or like you've mentioned, card issuers change cards as well. The value proposition of continuing to hang on to certain cards may not be the same from year to year to year. 

So I'm curious, how often do you take a look at all of your rewards cards, and what is your process for evaluating whether a specific card is worth keeping, especially if it carries a high annual fee? 

Suzy: So I probably evaluate it once a month. But like I was mentioning before, that Travel Freely app sends me an email, and it will tell me when an annual fee is coming due. That's the reminder to go ahead and make a call to the bank to see if it's worth it to keep it open. I find that to be the most effective way to stay organized. What was your second question? Sorry. 

Devon: Yeah, no problem. I asked what is your overall process for evaluating whether a specific card is worth keeping? 

Suzy: Well, it basically depends on what the bank incentivizes me to keep it open. It could be a $50 credit. Is that $50 credit, if it's worth it, if it's a $95 annual fee but it also gets me an early boarding group and free check-in luggage? In that case, I might be getting my money's worth because they're offsetting that annual fee with that $50 credit.

They also might tempt me with something like 15,000 Delta SkyMiles if I keep the Delta Platinum open. That might be worth it because I know that I have an upcoming trip where those SkyMiles actually might be worth it because there are certain little sweet spots that you can use it for. I also like to keep the calculations and knowing what points are worth near me or in my head.

If you know how much a Amex point is or a Chase point is worth or a Hyatt point is worth, and then they tell you well, we're happy to give you 10,000, let's say, Citibank points, some of those Thank You points. You know that those 10,000 Citibank points are worth at least $100, but if you know how to use them well, they're worth at least $200. Then you can make that judgment call. Well, if the annual fee is $95 on that Citi Strata used-to-be Premier card then it might be worth it to keep it open if they're going to incentivize me to get 10,000 points if I make $1,000 spend on that card. 

So it's a lot of calculations. Sometimes when you're talking to the bank, you have to do some quick calculations in your head. I find that having that ability to know what they're worth ahead of time, whether you look at the Points Guy evaluations, it really helps to be able to make a judgment call on whether it's worth it to keep it open or not. 

Devon: Yeah, so I'm going to take just a quick step back here because I think one of the things that a lot of people might be familiar with is that let's say you go through just an initial evaluation process where you're looking at all the current cards that you have open, and you've identified one that, again, you don't really anticipate getting a ton of value out of over the upcoming year, or you don't anticipate getting enough value to justify the annual fee.

So I think a lot of people would probably think well, the option that's open to them is to just outright cancel the card, which you, of course, can do. But that's not always the best option. So can you talk to me a little bit about if you don't want to outright cancel a card, what else can you do with a card that you also don't want to continue paying a really high annual fee on? What's everything that's available to you? 

Suzy: So the second thing is to product change the card. If you don't downgrade it into something that's in the same family, one of the things you could do is just ask if there's another product that is a no annual fee card. So that you can still get some benefit to it, but you're not paying, say, $95 for it.

For example, I had the Chase Sapphire Reserve originally and then when the annual fee kept on going up and up and up I said, I'm not getting my money's worth out of it. So I ended up changing it to a Chase Freedom card. It's not the same family, but it still is going to give me values because whenever they have that 5X on groceries, for example, I can use that to be able to get up to $1,500 worth of value when I'm spending that $1,500 and getting the 5X on that. So those are the two things. It's basically either product changing the card or downgrading the card to no annual fee card if you don't want to close it. 

Devon: Yeah, and you've touched on this a little bit, but I was just hoping you could expand on it. For people who maybe have never heard of this idea before, or this concept, can you tell us a little bit more about what is a retention offer, and how do you actually incorporate it into your points earning strategy? 

Suzy: So a retention offer is when a bank offers you a reason to keep a card open that you're considering closing. So they're trying to incentivize you staying as a customer because it actually makes more sense for them to keep you as a customer than to lose the money that they gave you for earning that welcome bonus. They get all the money on the swipe fees if you keep on using that card. So that is basically it. If they can make it a sweet enough deal, then a lot of times you can be convinced to keep it open.

Devon: Yeah, one of the things that I think is interesting is that, at least in my experience, tell me if your experience has been different. Banks certainly do not go out of their way to let you know that this even exists as an option.  I have never ever received an email from one of my credit card issuers or had any sort of like pop-up or notification in any of my credit card accounts saying oh, you have a card that maybe is coming up due for its annual fee. If you're thinking of closing it, contact us first. Or here's how we would like to encourage you to continue keeping this card open. 

This is something that banks, not every single one of them, but many banks have available. So many consumers don't even know that this exists. So can you give us a couple more examples about what are the different kind of flavors that a retention offer might actually come in? What can people potentially expect to be offered in order to keep a credit card account open? 

Suzy: Sure. The first time I ever did this, one of the ways that they incentivized me to keep a card open was for that original Marriott card. I had actually been considering closing it because I didn't know any better and how it was going to affect my credit score. This was before 2016. So I said yeah, I'm looking to close the card. I don't want to pay the $95 annual fee. I'm not going to be staying in Marriott that much. They said well, we can't waive the annual fee, which is $95, but we can offer you a $100 credit if you go ahead and keep it open. I was like well, okay. I made $5 on that call. 

Another thing that they might do is say, if you don't close this American Express Platinum card, we will give you 40,000 Amex points if you are able to spend $3,000 in three months. So as I see that, that's a little mini signup bonus. That's a really good incentive. That was probably the best signup offer I ever had from a credit card company. 

They also might just say, you know what? If you keep it open, you don't have to make any spend. We'll just waive the annual fee. That's happened a lot when I've done it with Barclays Bank for their American Airlines card, their Aviator card, as well as the JetBlue card. They tend to just say, we'll just waive it this year. 

Then the following year, when I say no, really, this time I want to close it. At that point, I had meant it. They're like okay, we're going to bring you over to a specialist who's going to help close the card. As they transferred me, the guy comes on and said, "Well, this time we're going to let you waive the annual fee again.” So I was like all right, let's keep it open again. I'll go ahead and stay with the higher boarding groups with JetBlue and get the free suitcase. Why not? Twist my arm. 

Devon: Yeah, I think that I've seen a couple of different kind of variations or flavors that retention offers come in. Like you mentioned, sometimes they'll just first offer just an annual fee reduction or a waiver. This can obviously depend on which specific card issuer you're calling or which card you're calling about. 

I've also seen statement credits maybe that come with or without a required spending amount. So, for instance, on a more premium level card, maybe they'll offer you a $175 credit with no spend requirement where you just knock $175 off of your statement balance. 

Then you've also mentioned these almost sort of like mini welcome bonus offers where for a certain amount of spend within a certain time period, you can also be offered the opportunity to earn extra points, or if it's a hotel or airline co-branded card extra hotel points or airline miles in order to keep your account open. 

You had mentioned a little bit previously in the call that one of the things that it sounds like you're doing when you're on one of these conversations and you've been offered a potential retention offer on a card is that you do an analysis because you're trying to determine whatever they're offering you, does that exceed the actual cost of the annual fee such that it makes sense for you to keep the card open? 

But I'm curious to hear of those different varieties of retention offers, whether it's a statement credit, a waived annual fee, or potentially bonus points with a required spend amount. Is there one of those that you just automatically would never accept, even if it would offset the cost of the annual fee? Or how do you personally kind of stratify the best retention offers? 

Suzy: Well, I always keep in mind the background of what are the benefits of the card because like we fly, say, Delta and American enough that having that early boarding group or being able to check in luggage, which we really do check in luggage, but every once in a while we do need it. It sometimes will make it worth it. So if they only give me a $50 credit, it still is going to be worth it to keep it open. 

For the most part, it's really, really rare that I don't accept an offer. But if they're saying, for example, you have to spend $3,000 in three months, but the offer is only for like say, 10,000 points, I might just be like yeah, no, we're going to close it because that's $3,000 I could be spending and getting another welcome offer entirely and earning anywhere from 70,000 to 100,000 points on another card. 

Devon: Yeah, I think that that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious to hear from you in that scenario where maybe you've contacted the bank, you've had the discussion about considering closing your card, they offer you a retention bonus or a potential retention offer, and you're not that enthusiastic about it. You mentioned you can go ahead and just close the account at that point. But are there any other options that are available to you? If you're given a retention bonus and you don't actually love the one that they offered and you don't want to close the card down? 

Suzy: Oh, absolutely. I will often ask if that's the best deal, if they have any other options. If they give me like hey, we'll give you a $50 credit, yet it's like a $295 annual fee. I'm like that's not very good. So what else you got for me? You just keep on asking what else do you have? What else do you have? Until something comes along that you like. Just because they offer it doesn't mean you have to take the first thing that's given to you.

Devon: How often has that worked, do you think, where you haven't loved the initial offer and you've just continued to ask if anything else is available? How often do they come back with something better that you've actually been excited about? 

Suzy: Probably about 30% of the time that I've done this. It's usually with American Express that they give me different options. 

Devon: Yeah. So for people who are given a potential retention offer, they don't love it. They ask oh, is there anything else available? The rep says, not at this time. This is everything that I can offer you. What are the chances that if you thank them for their time, but say you want to keep the account open and you end the call. If you were to call back and ask again a day or a week later, do you think there's any chance that the potential retention offers available to someone on that same exact card can potentially be different? 

Suzy: I think there is a possibility because from what I've read there have been times where reps will say to people who are asking for retention offers, well, you can try calling back a different day. Sometimes it'll be different as far as what I see on my computer as what's available to you. 

Devon: Have you ever done that before? Are you always been really successful in your initial call and just taken or left the offer available to you? 

Suzy: I just know what I want, and I just get it done when I'm on the phone with them right there. I'm one of those people who I don't feel like hanging up and calling again, the HUCA method, which makes sense for some people. But you also have to discover like what's important for your time. I could be seeing more patients instead and providing a service rather than just trying to haggle over like a $50, $95 annual fee. That's going to not really benefit too many people. Whereas I'd rather see patients for that amount of time that I'd be spending on doing the hang up call again method. 

Devon: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think if you're someone who is persistent and is comfortable asking on the call whether or not just better offers are available at that time, knowing that you've had a 30% success rate with that seems like a really efficient way to go about having that conversation. 

Suzy: Oh, absolutely. 

Devon: So one of the things that you mentioned, and I've seen the same thing, is that when we think about all of the different credit card issuers, you mentioned that you've gotten some good offers from American Express. But I'm curious, if you had to rank or grade the various credit card issuers, how common do you think retentions are based on the credit card issuer? Or do you find that some tend to be much more generous with their retention offers than others? 

Suzy: So definitely the most generous has been American Express. But one of the trends that I've noted, because I've been keeping detailed notes of what the retentions offers are over the last few years, is that at least with my Amex Platinum, the benefit that they're giving me as far as how many points or how much I have to spend is getting less and less. 

Originally, it was 40,000 points back in 2022. This year, when I asked for the retention offer for that same Amex Platinum, it was only 15,000 points. But I knew I wanted to keep it open because I use their lounges enough, and I like the 5X on the flights and stuff. So I see it trending downward with American Express if you ask enough times. 

I do find also that Barclays tends to be pretty good about at least for the first two times you ask for it, being able to waive those annual fees. Citibank usually has offers, whether it be on your personal or your business cards. I tried earlier this week to see if I could get the annual fee waived on my KLM. It was KLM Air France card that's from Bank of America. 

Just to the point of what I've read online, Bank of America really doesn't tend to give any retention offers. When I was talking to the rep, they're like yeah, no, we don't do that. I was like okay. But one of the benefits of it, I did end up closing that card. But I ended up shifting my credit line over to a different card that I have with Bank of America, which is the no annual fee travel rewards card, such that now on that card, I have 56,000 credit line. 

So when it comes to my son's next tuition payment, I'll be able to put all 44K on that and be able to, I think I'll make $140 in the end even though it has like a 2.3% cost for using my credit card to pay for his tuition. But I'm still going to benefit by having that credit line move. So there is some benefit. That might bring up another point that we might want to talk about later, which is moving your credit line if you do decide to close the card. 

Devon: Yeah, no, I think this is a perfect time to talk about it because that is a really, really smart thing to do in terms of, one, not only maintaining credit available to you so that you can use it on another card, potentially for large spends, like you mentioned with your son's tuition. But also kind of remembering back to the factors that impact our credit score, that credit utilization ratio is the second most important factor.

So when you close down a credit card and you functionally lose access to that line of credit, that can inadvertently hurt your credit score just because you now have less amount of overall credit extended to you. So I think that tip and that reminder, that even if you do end up choosing to close down a credit card account, that you can still request to have your credit line moved to another card issued within the same issuer, of course. That that can be really important to remember. 

Suzy: Yeah, and also going back to the question before. I did want to mention that with Chase, they don't really tend to offer too many retention offers. Like they might do it, and if they do, it's on a co-branded card. Typically, it's rare that I've ever had it on. Actually, I've never had it for Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve, even though we were putting a good amount of spend both on my or my husband's cards. They have never, ever offered us any retention bonus for that one. Then from what I hear, and I've never done it with Wells Fargo, but I don't think that they tend to give a lot of retention offers. 

Devon: Yeah, I think that's really good just to set expectations to sort of have an understanding of which credit card issuer is more or less likely to even extend a retention offer, a retention bonus to you. So that again, when you go into these phone calls, you already have that expectation kind of adjusted appropriately. 

I've heard the same thing about Chase, specifically that retention offers on the Sapphire products are very, very uncommon. I don't know that I would say they're impossible, but I haven't heard about them very frequently. Whereas I have heard about Chase more commonly offering retention offers on their airline and their co-branded cards. 

I've heard the same thing about Citi as well. That the retention offers do tend to be more frequent, more common, for instance, on their American Airlines co-branded cards and a little bit less common on the Citi Thank You Points earning cards. So I think having a general kind of expectation or understanding that in terms of all of the different credit card issuers, sounds like American Express tends to be the most predictable one in terms of offering retention offers and offering strong ones. Then moving down from there that you might be able to get one on a co-branded card from Citi or Chase. 

I haven't heard of retention offers from Capital One either. So even though they have some really strong points earning cards, perhaps you should set expectations a little bit lower. It sounds like maybe for Capital One and Wells Fargo. 

But let's just come back to a logistics question again for folks who have never heard of this or have never considered asking for a retention offer before. Can you walk me through kind of how it actually works? When do you request one of these, and what is the process for finding out if one is available to you? 

Suzy: Oh yeah, sure. So basically when the annual fee comes due after a year, you want to see it show up on your statement first. Because if you end up trying to do this retention call beforehand, what's going to happen is sometimes they might claw back your bonus if you close the card beforehand. So that's a very important thing. So wait at least 12 months after you open the card, wait for the annual fee to hit. Because if in the long run you end up closing the card, they will give you back your annual fee. So that's going to be the first thing. Wait for that annual fee to hit. 

Second thing is you take your credit card, flip it over, look at the telephone number. You dial that number. You get in touch with representative. Talk to the chatbot and say representative. Do not say to the chatbot close your card. Because there have been times where if people say close your card, the chatbot or the computer will actually close their card. There have been reports of that. So you want to make sure you're talking to a human. 

When you finally get in touch with that human, you're going to say, I'm considering closing my card. I want to discuss what can be done. Can I offset the annual fee? Can you waive the annual fee? I'm not traveling as much anymore. I'll give them reasons why I might not be using that card as much. Such as well, my husband got status this year on so-called airlines. So it doesn't make much sense for me to spend on this card as it is for him to pay for our flights for our family. We'll use things like that.

So we'll go back and forth with the rep talking about why you're considering closing the card. Then after you give the reasons, you tell the rep, are there any reason you can give me? Do you have any retention offer for me not to close the card? Or I'll ask can you waive the annual fee as a lead-in question? 

Then the next part that happens is the rep is going to say to you, well, these are the benefits of the card. Then they're going to tout how much they're each worth. You get your free check-in luggage. You get your early boarding group. You get your free hotel night certificate. You get your Uber credit. What was funny is even with American Express, as I said before, I got over $1,200 value. They listed every single thing that I did. So with them, I can't say I don't get my money's worth out of it. 

But in any event, they'll try to convince you to keep the card open without necessarily giving you a retention bonus. You're like well, I know I got it this year. I just don't think I can do it this upcoming year. Then at that point is when they're going to say, well, here is something that we can offer you. If you keep this card open and you spend $3,000 in three months, then we'll give you X number of SkyMiles or American Airlines miles or JetBlue points or whatever it is that you're talking to. Or we'll waive the annual fee. 

So this is the part where the quick math comes in. Fortunately, we tend to be STEM nerds, some math and science nerds, and we can do these calculations pretty quickly in our head for the most part, if you're familiar with evaluations. Then you can make the decision whether or not you want to take that offer. Even if you might want to take that offer, ask for is there a better offer? Is there anything better out there? 

Sometimes that second offer is not as good as the first offer. Sometimes they've offered me the $50 credit when the original number of points they were offering me in the first offer was actually worth more if you know how to spend those points. 

So they'll give you options. You can decide, do I like any of those options? Then if the answer is yes, then they do this little spiel. You say you're going to open the card and now you have to know you have to spend X amount in three months, or you don't have to spend any if they're just going to waive the fee. 

Or if you decide you don't want to keep the card open, you can decide, do I want to just downgrade this card? Do I want to product change the card like we discussed? If the answer is no to those, the next step is going to be that moving the credit over before you close the card. 

So as we had touched upon, you don't want it to affect your credit score. If it's going to affect it, you want to minimize that impact. So then I'll also ask well, if I'm going to close this card, can you help me move some of that credit line over? Most of the time they can do it. Some banks won't do it for you, but the majority of them have. Then I'll decide to close the card. So those are the steps. 

Devon: Yeah, exactly. One of the things I wanted to reiterate, as you said, you know, especially for a card that you've held for about a year, that any new rewards card that you open up, of course, you want to hold it for at least 12 months, maintain a good relationship with the bank. But you can basically ask for a retention offer on a card any time after you've held it for at least a year. I'm just curious about your approach. Do you tend to frequently request retention offers, even on cards that you fully intend to keep open? Or do you reserve going down the retention offer route for cards that you're really only seriously considering canceling? 

Suzy: I do it for almost all of the cards now because once you have done it enough times, it's a pretty easy call. I find that having to call patients about biopsy results is a lot more anxiety provoking sometimes than having to talk to a rep. I mean, the worst that'll happen is they say no. Then you decide if you want to close the card or not. But once you do it enough times, it tends to be pretty easy. 

Devon: That is so great to hear about because this is probably has to do very much with personality type that I really, really, really will do almost anything I humanly can to avoid having to get on a phone call with somebody else, especially a customer service rep. So I have not very frequently called and asked for retention offers. I think that that's something that I potentially have left points or statement credits on the table. 

But I think it's really great to also just be able to calibrate to your own personality and preference or how assertive do you want to be about going after some of these retention offers? I'm sure that you've earned a lot more of them than I have by being a little bit more willing to have these conversations. 

Suzy: Well, Devon, you remind me of my reluctant player two who doesn't want to get on the phone. So I have a little hint for those who are like that.

Devon: Yes, please. 

Suzy: You have the reluctant player two, and they have the one who doesn't mind making the phone calls. Obviously, I'm the one who doesn't mind. So what we'll do is when it's time for my husband to do his retention offer. First of all, I remind him because Travel Freely has reminded me that his annual fee is due. Then we'll do it at a time where we can both be on our landline together or be on speakerphone on his cell phone. He'll call the bank, and he'll say, “Hey, my wife is the one who does the finances in the family. So can she talk to you about whether or not we're going to close the card?” 

He'll still be in the room while I'm doing this. But I do all of the talking. He's right there next to me. They'll offer the retention offer, and I'll calculate out for him so he doesn't have to do the work. So I pretty much do it all on the chat on American Express. Then Sean Spadafora has been asleep sometimes when he's typed out his chat. In any event, it helps if you do have somebody who is really comfortable with doing it. I'm happy to do a few with you. 

Devon: I was actually thinking this could be an interesting little side business that you can start up for people who are entirely human interaction avoidant. If we can just come and lean on you to do some of our retention calls, that would be fantastic. I would happily hire someone to do that. 

Suzy: Well, and here's the other thing too is if you're one who hates being on the phone with people and interacting with the reps that way, while you're on the phone with them, if you have other cards that are with that same issuer, you can ask if there's any other retention offers with some of the other cards that you've had open for a couple years with them. I've done that before. 

Let's just kind of go through all of my cards. Can you tell me if I have a retention offer on any other ones? Sometimes they'll do it and I'll be like okay, yeah, I'll do that. I'll do that. Just make sure that you don't end up committing to spending more than you can afford over those next three to six months if they require spending to get that retention offer. So you can multitask that and just get all the Chase things done. You probably won't get too much with Chase, all the Amex cards done at the same time. So you only have to really make one phone call. I've done that before if I just wanted to be efficient.

Devon: Yeah, that is such a great tip. I actually did not realize that you could have them review all of your currently open cards and check them all for retention offers. So thank you so much for sharing that tip. Before we wrap up today, I just have one more question that I wanted to ask you. That is what are some of the common mistakes that people make around retention offers and what can they do to avoid them? 

Suzy: Well, I think one of the biggest common mistakes is, first of all, if they try to close the card and ask for it before the annual fee has passed. Because that's when the RAT team may get involved. If people aren't familiar with the RAT team, that's the Rewards Abuse Team if you're working with American Express. 

So if you're trying to close it beforehand or you're asking for something like that before you even have gone through an entire year, then they probably are going to guess you're gaming the system. You're just trying to be a card churner. So in that case, make sure you wait at least that 13 months or wait until after the 12 months. 

So the next thing, too, that people don't do is ask for multiple retention offers, as we had mentioned before. That is something that you forget to do. The other thing is just putting on your calendar and being organized so that when that annual fee comes due, you remember to do it. I've accidentally forgot to do a few here and there. Fortunately, they're the ones that I definitely get outsized value from the hotel certificate that I get from my Marriott card or my Hyatt card or something like that.

So those are among some of the things. Also, as I mentioned before, saying close my card to a chat bot or to the little box or on the phone. Don't do that so you don't accidentally close a card that you actually wanted to keep open. I think that those are the majority of things that I can think of. Big mistakes for beginners. 

Devon: Yeah. I think that especially remembering that last one that you mentioned about the thing you never, ever want to do on one of these conversations is to lead with saying I want to cancel my card. Or even like I'm thinking of canceling my card if you're talking to a chat bot because a chat bot, like you said, could just see that word cancel and automatically close the card. 

So for people who love a little bit of hand holding can you just remind us one last time what is the exact question that you pose to a customer service rep? Or what exactly can one of us steal from you and write down to use as part of our conversation the next time we're asking for a retention offer? Instead of saying I'm going to close my account or I'm thinking of canceling my card, what should we say instead?

Suzy: I would, first of all, praise the benefits of the card and what you liked about it so that they know that you sort of can be convinced to keep it open. Like I've really enjoyed the fact that I've been able to get on the airplane earlier or have that free hotel and night certificate. However, under the circumstances of this year, I might, and you can insert the reason why you might not be able to get your money's worth. 

Then from there you can say is there any way you can convince me to keep it open that will make it valuable? Like, are you able to waive the annual fee? A lot of times I'll ask them that straight out. Then they'll say no. I was like well, do you have any type of retention offer? Now I'm bold enough to just say the word retention offer. I've done this enough times, and they know what we're going for. So, and most of the time they do have something to offer me. 

Devon: All right. Amazing. Thank you so much for that tip and for sharing all of your knowledge and experience around retention offers with us today. I hope this conversation has opened up for some people a new idea about a way that they can potentially earn a couple extra points or start offsetting the cost of some of their credit card annual fees by getting some statement credits, waived annual fees, or again, additional points for keeping credit cards open. Thank you, Suzy, for joining us today. I always value your time, your expertise, and I really appreciate the conversation. Thank you so much. 

Suzy: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Point Me to First Class. If you want more tips on turning your expenses into travel, visit pointmetofirstclass.com to learn more. See you next week.