January Churn

Given that I have most of the top credit cards available in the market, a new job that will greatly limit my 2014 ability to travel and the potential of purchasing a house in the fall, I felt like having a nice easy 2-card churn. In hindsight I probably should have put more consideration on the Club Carlson credit card (my hotel points are scarily low), but alas, there’s always April to look forward to. For anyone who is concerned about credit scores, after signing up for a $4.95 Equifax 3-in-1 score trial, I found that my credit scores from all three credit bureaus has increased from last January, and have across the board gone up between 30-60 points. You can also find information on how this affects credit scores here.

I chose to apply for the Citi American Airlines Business credit card and the Barclays Arrival card. I chose the AA card as it is the last card for me in the “American Arsenal” without having to pay a high annual fee – as I already have the AA Personal Visa, AA Personal AMEX and AA World Mastercard. These three cards netted me 140,000 AA miles in 2013, which I used with NSPfiance for our Cathay Pacific flight from Cleveland to Bangkok, and that experience left me thirsting for me. So when I applied and received a pending notice, I fully understood (Citi usually puts me on a pending status). I immediately started an online chat, and the representative told me that it was unfortunately declined. Time to call. Immediately. Upon calling, after a 15 minute conversation it appeared I was not going to get approved through that agent. The reasoning: my business was too new. That seemed like a strange reason. I would have completely understood if the reason was either: “you have made $0 in revenues in the past year” or “you cannot guarantee any revenue for 2014.” [you can always change that scenario here *cough* /shameless plug]. So I hung up, took care of some things around the house and called back up. I will note that throughout the entire conversation, I was always very courteous and polite. When I called back up, I immediately said: “hello, I just called up about 15 minutes ago and was told my application was declined. I just have a couple of additional questions.” I made sure to let them know I just spoke to someone in case they logged my previous phone call (which many banks do). To my complete surprise, the agent responded with: “Oh, I think I just talked to you.” Whoops. This wasn’t looking good. I then asked if there was any way I could have the decision reconsidered that evening or if I had to wait a week for the official letter arrived in the mail, which is what the same agent previously told me. She said I would have to wait, and then said that since it looked like I chose the “email reply” option, the official mail should arrive via email within 2-4 hours instead of a week. Again, I was extremely polite, thanked her and told her I was exited to receive the email so I wouldn’t have to wait a week for the official response. I hung up, thinking I was done. It wasn’t meant to be. Imagine my immense surprise when 20 minutes later the phone rang. It was the agent I spoke to twice! She had made a couple phone calls and got my application approved! I was somewhat skeptical, but upon checking my application status online, I found:

Moral of the story: Always be extremely nice to customer service representatives.

I was worried about my second card, the Barclays Arrival card. I chose this card because it allows for $440 in free travel after an initial $1,000 in spend. This could be useful for domestic flights where I don’t want to burn Southwest points, 25K miles on other domestic carriers or when AA is out of saver awards (which can be redeemed using British Airways Avios). The only card I have ever been declined for (out of 20+ applications for other credit cards over the past couple of years), was the Barclays Arrival card. At the time of my denial, they gave me two reasons: first, I had applied for a card with them six month prior, and second, I had low utilization of both of my existing Barclays credit cards. The utilization issue was easy…a few trips to CVS over the past few months allowed me to put a few thousand dollars on the card and also take advantage of a promotion for bonus U.S. Airways miles. The other issue, could only be improved with time – and I had no idea how much time would be needed between applications. So again I was shocked when I saw the “instant approval” message!

So there you have it. Within 90 days I should be able to build my AA balance up as well as save some money on a domestic flight. Hopefully April will be as successful and some great new products or bonuses are announced!