I would love to know what kind of language the credit card companies use to describe customers. often, if you can learn an industry’s venacular, you can understand how/why you are treated the way you often are - good and bad. for example, finer hotels will always refer to their customers as ‘guests’, even in the back office. this use of language permeates the operation, and should manifest itself towards the ‘guest’ as ‘hospitality.’
having been bombarded with mileage bonus offers from CitiBank for quite some time, I thought I might as well take them up on one of the offers, and open up a new business account, since I didn’t have one, I technically have a business, and the miles would be applied to my personal AAdvantage account. 25,000 miles if I keep the card for a year, and spend $2,500.00. not bad - that is 1 free domestic round trip right there! plus, they waive the fee ($50) the first year.
now, most financial rags will warn you off mileage cards as not being worth it. how you should focus on cash back or rebate cards if you do not carry a balance, since you can never get fair value for your spending with miles. in my case though, Daddy works for American, and so we always get more than our share of ugprades and the like. also, we save up miles to use in huge amounts - last time I cashed miles, it was 250,000 for 2 first class tickets to Japan. retail value was over $20,000, and to be honest, discount value was not much less. in this regard, I am well ahead of the game.
so I fill out the application, and send it off, and a couple weeks later, my new card shows up. as I call to activate it, I notice my credit limit is set to $500.00. If I was an 18 year old kid, and this was my first card, I’d understand the low limit (in fact, I believe my first card was a $500 limit), but I have years of excellent credit history, I’m already a CitiBank customer, and this is a ‘Platinum Business Card’. I’ve had dinners that cost more than $500.00, what kind of business expenditures can I incur with this?
anyway, I call the AAdvantage Business customer support line just to make sure it wasn’t a typo, and sure enough - $500.00. The friendly agent asks though, ‘are you a current Citi customer, because sometimes they issue a single line of credit, and split it amongst the accounts.’ fair enough - I give her my other account number and she looks it up. ‘Looks like you have more credit on the other card, would you like to transfer some of it to this one?’ sure, I say, what’s the line on the other one? ‘$26,500.00.’
so, clearly, there is an imbalance, and the agent puts in the order to transfer some of the credit - I certainly didn’t need any more. but c’mon, that should be an even more obvious sign that sending me another card with a $500 limit will either be received as a slap in the face, or (in my case) seen as a useless piece of plastic I don’t know what to do with.
I will say though, more kudos than complaints for this issue. first of all, even if it’s not a seperate group of people answering the ‘AAdvantage Business Card Customer Support Hotline,’ I appreciate the effort to distinguish you from the crowd when you call. also, calling during the hot time still only had me waiting about 1 minute to talk to a human. finally, the lady had a good idea on her first try, and then started the solution ball rolling. I think AA pushes the branding thing, because all their partners set up ‘AAdvantage Hotlines’, but Citi has always done me right with cards and mortgages. I often get them to waive the annual fee just by asking.
thumbs up all around.