Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Citibank Does it Again

from Ben's mom

Back in May when I tried to cancel my credit card, the good customer service people talked me into not closing the account for 5,000 frequent flyer miles. Until August. So yesterday, I decided it was really time to close that account.

The nice woman who took my call asked me why I was canceling and then said, "I completely understand. Let me have you talk with a specialist who can take care of that." Angie, "the Specialist," came on the line. "You've been an excellent customer for 11 years now. We value your business. Why are you choosing to close the account?" I told her we were happy with Citibank but that we had tried to book 6 different tickets in the last 8 months with our American miles and hadn't been able to do it and we were dumping American as our primary airline. I added that we didn't want to pay an annual fee on a miles credit card on an airline we didn't want to use. The next thing I knew we had a frequent flyer card that can be used to book travel on ANY airline (just call us and we'll book) and no annual fee. The interest rate (not a concern because we pay the thing off each month) is lower too.

MJR said, "Now why do we still have two frequent flyer credit cards?" "Because I like to reward good customer service." "Ah, yes," he nods. "I understand now."

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