The U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve card launched a little over a year ago, meaning that many readers are now having the annual fee on that card post. Given that the annual fee is $400, a lot of readers want to know if they should keep the card, cancel the card or downgrade it to another U.S. Bank card. I thought having a dedicated post on this would be useful. Before we get started let’s take a quick overlook at the card.
- Annual fee of $400 for the primary cardholder. Authorized users can be added for $75 each.
- $325 in annual travel credits. This is based on a card member year, rather than calendar year.
- Card earns at the following rates:
- 3x on mobile payments (including LoopPay/MST transactions)
- 3x on travel purchases made directly with airlines, hotels, car rental companies, taxis, limousines, passenger trains and cruise line companies
- 1x on all other purchases
- Use real time rewards on travel purchases to get 1.5¢ per point.
- Priority Pass Select Membership (first four visits and four accompanying guests are free, then $27 per visit).
- 12 Complimentary Gogo Wi-Fi Passes
Keep in mind that U.S. Bank will refund your annual fee if you cancel or downgrade within 30 days of it posting to your account. I’d also recommend calling retention to see if they will offer you any sort of bonus for keeping the card. According to some comments people are being offered up to 10,000 points.
Keep The Card
The annual fee of $400 on this card is partially offset by the $325 travel credit. I never value travel credits as cash, as cash is infinitely more flexible but you need to decide how much you value this travel credit. At best even with this travel credit you’re paying an annual fee of $75 and if the card benefits outweigh that annual fee (or the difference between your value of the travel credit and the annual fee).
The priority pass membership this card is weak compared to other premium credit cards as you’re limited to 4 visits and 4 guest visits. If you already have better priority pass access through another card then this benefit is effectively worth $0. That being said if you only travel infrequently for leisure then 4 visits annually might be more than enough for your travel needs. I also don’t put a lot of value on the Gogo inflight Wi-Fi passes, but this will again depend on your own valuation.
The real benefit of keeping this card long term will be the fact it earns 3x on mobile payments and travel purchases and then those points are worth 1.5¢ each. This effectively makes it 4.5% back on some categories. Unfortunately U.S. Bank is quite strict when it comes to purchases, especially mobile payments so taking advantage of this is difficult (more on that here). My personal opinion is that keeping the card long term doesn’t make a lot of sense, I’d prefer to just cycle through other premium credit cards to take advantage of benefits such as lounge access rather than keeping one card long term. Your own situation will be different, so add up how much you value each benefit and then see if that is higher or lower than the $400 annual fee. You should also take into account any retention bonus you’re offered for keeping the card.
Downgrade The Card
Update: There is at least one report of it not being possible to downgrade this card.
U.S. Bank does allow product downgrades/product changes, the only real rule they have is that you can’t product change to a branded product (e.g you couldn’t product change this to a Radisson Rewards card). The best downgrade option in my opinion is the U.S. Bank Cash+, as this card lets you choose two categories to earn 5% in (maximum of $2,000 in combined spend per quarter). Categories are:
- Ground Transportation
- Select Clothing Stores
- Cell Phones
- Electronics Stores
- Car Rentals
- Gyms/Fitness Centers
- Home Utilities
- Fast Food
- Sporting Goods Stores
- Department Stores
- Furniture Stores
- Movie Theaters
Cancel The Card
In my opinion there is no advantage to cancelling your card over downgrading it. Downgrading the card will give you access to another 5% card and you’ll keep your account’s history (e.g it’ll show the same opening date and help to improve your average age of accounts, a scoring factor for FICO).
F.A.Q’s
My account anniversary has past, I haven’t been charged the annual fee yet. Can I get a second $325 travel credit and then cancel/downgrade before the annual fee hits?
Honestly this is what most readers want the answer to. From what I’ve seen the travel credit hasn’t posted for anybody in their second year yet (regardless of whether they paid the annual fee or not). Would love to see some more datapoints regarding this. This datapoint suggests it’s possible.
Our Verdict
This card could be worth keeping for some people and it would be worth keeping for even more people if they weren’t so strict on purchases earning 3%. I think the majority of readers will be best downgrading this card to the Cash+ and cycling through other premium cards available to get benefits such as lounge access. The card is still definitely worth getting in the first year though due to the 50,000 point sign up bonus. Feel free to agree or disagree with me in the comments below.
For another data point, 2nd year just started. Annual fee posted Sept 14. Called Oct 9, was offered 5k points. I wasn’t ready to make a decision so said I would call back. Called the next morning. Rep offered nothing whatsoever, and really wanted to have me downgrade to a no annual fee card. Ended that call. Called back later in the evening, and the rep offered three options: 1) downgrade to a no annual fee card, 2) lower the APR, or 3) 10k points. Seems it really is just the luck of the draw on how helpful the rep is. My advice: if you get an unhelpful one, just politely end the call and call back another time. Rinse and repeat until you get a helpful representative.
I called about mine on the 11th month so I would not get charged the fee. They were not helpful. They would not transfer the available credit to any of my other cards, and they did NOT offer to waive the fee. I just canceled the card. Maybe I’ll know better next time, thanks for the info.
Another year, another retention offer of 10k points (no spend req.), but they made me work for it this time. Annual spend of ~$5,100.
First rep said no retention offers available and pushed me to product change to a no AF card. HUCA. 2nd rep pushed the same thing, I then explicitly asked if there was a points offer and was offered 5000 points. I pushed and asked for 10,000, was placed on hold, rep coordinated with a “specialist”, and came back to say they added 5000+5000 to the account and was told this was likely a one-time deal since I’d received 10k last year (really four years in a row). Every previous retention request was easy peasy.
Just confirming retention bonuses are still alive and well. 10k, no requirement, each of the past 4 years.
Just the usual not traveling as much, don’t know if I can justify the AF, then directly asked if there were any retention offers available.
Year 3 AF just posted. Called and was again offered 10K points; accepted. Approx. $4k in annual spend, all Mobile Wallet.
Just called, was offered 5000 pts. Decided to keep it.
I just called and they waived the annual fee.
At first she just said she could give me an apr discount down to 7.9%, lol. Put me on hold to check what else she could do and came back and told me she would waive the fee.
This is the first year I had the card and was 28 days past the date the annual fee hit. So it may help that I was right at the point to cancel. Didn’t check on the downgrade option, since she waived the annual fee.
Not much spending on the card for me. I have a recurring $10 bill and initial spend to get to total amount along with some extra in the beginning.
No GC purchases or mobile payments at all.
She seemed pretty clueless that the card includes a $325 credit each year, she never mentioned it. She kept bringing up that I could use points in the future to help offset the fee. She did say the af credit was a one time thing.
FWIW, AF hit a couple weeks ago and travel credits started posting right away for Uber/Lyft charges, so you should be able to max travel credit out before downgrade or cancel. I was offered and took the 10k retention bonus (no spend).
Question does anyone know if buying Refundable airline tickets – then later canceling after Travel credit posts is still working. Loooking for another DP – I know that I will make use of the TC but would rather get credit upfront and then use it later at my leisure.
Here is the DP I saw https://www.doctorofcredit.com/u-s-bank-altitude-reserve-keep-downgrade-or-cancel/#comment-619357
Annual fee just hit. I called on Sunday, and after being told by the rep he was trying to offer me 20k points but was unable to get approval, he said ‘know what, I’m just going to waive the fee for you.”
I haven’t seen any other DP of waived annual fee, only the 10k point offer. Was very excited about this.
Was anyone RECENTLY able to double dip the 2nd year annual travel credit, before canceling (or downgrading) the card?
I know there is a link posted above from early March saying ‘no’, but that DP is from a poster with 1 post and it is conflicting with all other historical DP’ saying ‘yes’.
So I’m curious if US Bank fixed sth. or the mentioned poster messed up somehow…?