In our post on annual fee refund rules for each card issuer, we’ve listed Citi as refunding annual fees as long as the card is downgraded or canceled within 30 days of the annual fee posting (and a prorated refund after that). It seems that the way that downgrades are handled by Citi is affecting how these annual fee refunds are also handled. Reddit user mk712 reports the following situation:
- Annual fee on Citi Premier was charged on May 6th
- Downgraded to a no annual fee card
- On May 11th received a letter confirming this change and starting that they would receive the new card by the end of May, but the new terms on the card would only start applying on June 30th
- Received annual fee refund of $79.16 on July 4th (10 month prorated refund instead of full refund)
There are also the following data points that match up with this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. This isn’t really a change to how Citi handles annual fee refunds, but a change to how they handle product downgrades. This makes downgrading a card with an annual fee difficult/impossible if you want the full refund, as the card must be opened for 12 months before requesting a downgrade/product change.
Just something to keep in mind, as always keeping good records will help in terms of knowing when annual fees become due. It might be possible to fight this with Citi and get the full refund (or you product changed completed sooner). Hopefully this isn’t a sign that Citi will do away with prorated annual fee refunds, like American Express recently announced.
It’s also possible that the botched Costco credit card transfer from American Express are causing product changes to happen slower than usual and business will return to normal once Citi finally works this out.
