Bank of America will discontinue the Better Balance Rewards card for new applications starting at the end of May. They’ll also roll out a no-balance-transfer-fee card, similar to Chase’s Slate.
A BofA worker let us know about this based on a memo that was sent out. You can still apply for a BBR card now until the end of May.
Existing BBR cardholders will remain as before, it’s only new applications that won’t be accepted starting June. Product-changing into the BBR card will likely also end at that time. Even now it’s difficult to find a rep who will do it, though there are sporadic reports of success. If you want to attempt it, probably better now than later.
The new card will be a standard Bank Americard specifically for people looking to complete balance transfer with no balance transfer fees & 0% APR for 12-18 months. Looks like this card, but without the balance transfer fee. They’ll probably rebrand it as a new card.
Hopefully, existing BBR cardholders will be able to take advantage of the $100-$120 annual benefit for a long time. You can view more cards with 0% APR and no balance transfer fees here.
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Update 1/23/2018 - Spoke to a rep who said that you can still submit a new application for a Better Balance Rewards card but their system has disabled the ability to product change to it.
Application link no longer works. Anyone have a working link?
I so much want to be greedy to get another one, but I haven't dared try any BofA since last Nov denied for ML, 'too many accounts' with them. One shy of a dozen. What is the latest on what triggers them to sweep through and start closures?
This is the latest: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/bank-america-closing-credit-card-accounts-limit-four/
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/psa-word-warning-bank-america-credit-card-applications/
Nothing really new.
I've made a comment like this before with regard to "US Bank" vs "U.S. Bank". But it would help out a lot if the titles of the posts on this blog were consistent with regard to how banks are named and products are titled. For instance, I had seen this post earlier and tried searching "bank of america" and "better balance" and could not find it. I had to scroll back through all the posts to get to it. I think it is best to in the titles of articles to use the full name ie. "Bank of America" vs other short hands like "BoA" or "BofA". It would help out greatly when trying to track down old posts (something I find myself doing frequently). The same goes for "better balance" vs "BBR". Thanks for all the useful info, just giving my 2 cents to try to make the blog better and easier to navigate for all readers!
Yeah good point, sometimes we shorten things to make it fit better in the title. I'll update this one, if you see us post any others let me know so we can fix those also.
It certainly would help a lot (I have search issues all the time as well), but on the other hand there's a limit to how long a title can be. So it's always a conundrum. In the post itself, I usually write out the full words at least the first time it's mentioned in the post.
Regarding PC'ing to the BBR: I vaguely remember reading a reddit post from someone stating to be a BoA rep noting that the BBR is "greyed out" as an option for possible cards to be changed to, meaning it's literally impossible. Can't seem to find the thread, but maybe one of the readers on DoC has seen it and has it bookmarked.
Well that might vary by rep because it's definitely still possible
Also a BofA employee here. I successfully PC'd 6 CR cards to BBR cards right before the recently imposed card limit (although they left me with 7 active, rather than the 4 that seems standard now. I had 2 others shut down). The trick was to get the request put in to the 'back office', as the associate I spoke with was not able to complete the PC, but said he could put in a request. I actually only did two cards with him, called back and got another associate to do two more by following the same steps (this one said it wouldn't work but I told them to do it anyway), and then called a third time for the last two. About 3 weeks later, they were all changed.... and only days later BofA killed two of them, but that was just bad timing, lol. Proof of concept is that once I knew what to ask for, every request was successful. Best of luck to all of you!
Today I asked to convert my cash reward card to BBR but no luck. So I close my cash reward card.
Have been trying to pc to bbr three times a month since last 5 months. No luck. Will continue to do it. I guess they have notes on my account when I call - something like "dude cannot understand "NO!"
interesting the Reddit user deleted his/her post.. now wondering if this is a false alarm or not..
I tried switching my AAA Gas Rebate card (old card, but run by BOA) to BBR but they said no :(
He probably saw the traction it was getting and didn't want to risk getting in trouble?
Found a rep who put in a request for both my ancient BOA cards to switch to the BBR. See if one of them goes through.
No dice on either. And no extensive notes about why not in each file so that's probably that.
Any idea how long you have to keep a card before they will let you convert to BBR card? I signed up for a Merril+ at the start of the year and wondering if I can convert it.
I had a rep tell me it was not possible to product change the Merril+ to a BBR. I didn't try again, but I think I will now.