Earlier this week it was announced that Barclays was making some changes to the American Airlines Aviator cards, including removing the 10% rebate on award bookings up to 10,000 miles annually. Citi cards will also lose this benefit on May 1st, the only other change being made to the Citi cards is the annual flight discount for spending $20,000 on the card is increasing from $100 to $125. It’s a shame that both cards are losing this 10% rebate benefit as it was the main reason anybody actually kept the cards.
Hat tip to VFTW
Each and every one of you is a consumer and should use your dollars to their fullest advantage. I recently paid the annual fee on the CITII AA card and will absolutely never do so again and will cancel next time around unless there is an offsetting statement credit. At least Barclays gives you a sizable signup bonus after your first purchase. I’ll simply sit out CITI for 24 month intervals and then use their card only for a year.
Just checked in my account, it stated as following:
“Earn miles on top of miles. Once you redeem your American Airlines AAdvantage® miles, you’ll get 10% of those back as bonus miles added to your account.
As of May 1, 2019, the benefit offering 10% of your AA redeemed miles back will be discontinued. Travel booked using AA Miles on or after May 1, 2019 will not qualify for this offering.”
Just got the official notification from Citi in an email.
I just received the email, too. I’ve had the Cit AA Plat card for years! So much for loyalty benefits / grandfathering. Will be cancelling…after reviewing my application strategy.
This 10% miles redemption rebate was implemented by AA, not by either Citi or Barclay. AA simply set it up so that having certain cards ENABLED this benefit at AA.
In fact, for quite a while Citi wasn’t even documenting this benefit, you had to go to an AA site to see the documentation about it.
So it’s obvious to me that AA is the one removing this benefit, not Citi or Barclay. And that explains why it’s disappearing simultaneously from ALL cards that ENABLED it.
This. Changes to benefits on airline cards are always set by the airlines when it comes to redeeming/earning miles.
I wonder how that is not covered by the CARD act. This is a benefit given out only to card holders, who have paid a fee. Turning it off without fair notice seems like its violating something somewhere.
I guess the rational response is to just go open up more accounts for the SUBs
Probably because it’s not considered a credit card benefit. From a Citi/Barclays perspective, it’s probably “this card enables certain benefits as determined by AA”, which included the 10% rebate, but also includes boarding priority, a checked bag benefit, etc. People read it as if the card itself is giving individual benefits, but since it’s AA who’s giving those benefits, the CARD act presumably can’t cover that, since the bank itself didn’t decide to change any of those AA-provided benefits. It’s AA who changed their list of benefits (by taking out the 10% rebate), but AA doesn’t issue these cards.
That’s the tricky thing will all sorts of partners cards, I’d bet there’s many partner-provided benefits on lots of partner cards that the CARD doesn’t cover.
I’ve seen partner benefits change many times, without the notice required for actual credit card benefits. For another recent example: Marriott dropped giving 15 elite nights separate for each credit card after the merger, neither Chase nor Amex changed that (but if affected anyone who had multiple Marriott cards from one or both of those banks). That was only announced in April, and went into effect at the start of this year.
Is this the Citi AA Platinum card (the one with $95 annual fee)?
Yes
Thanks.
The 10% rebate was a nice perk, but too bad it couldn’t be applied prior to redeeming award travel. I once had to pay $200 to buy a few miles to earn an award ticket, only to earn back those miles through this rebate after the award ticket was issued!! Oh well..
I called and cancelled mine. It was entirely a robo-call cancellation. Seemingly no person to try and convince me to stay or haggle annual fee waving option.
Shouldn’t you just downgrade to the no annual fee account, instead of hurting your credit history?
The no annual fee card counts separately from the others in terms of 24 month language (relating to sign up bonus) so canceling and trying for the no annual fee card as a new application is the smarter thing to do.
I was debating the renewal back in January and barely decided to keep the Aviator. Just called in and fee refunded and account closed.
I thought this bonus was nice paired with 2x on grocery spend but this just made it easier to just cancel the cards and keep signing up for the bonus instead.
Don’t the 24 month rules pretty much prevent that?
I get one to two codes without the language each month. These bypass the 24 month rules.
A major legacy benefit is shutting down (extra 10k of AA miles each year). This accounted for i.e. Asia business round trip using respectable airlines for $130k plus fees without fuel surcharges making it the best deal among all airline programs. Book your flights for up to 11 months ahead before May 1st if you still have the 10% allowance left. This is a great loss.
If I book multiple award flights now, will I still get the 10% rebate on miles if the flights are after may 1?
Yes that’s when the benefit ends.