There are many reasons to change your credit card from one product to another, the most common being in order to move from a card that charges an annual fee to one that doesn’t. There are also some cards that you can’t apply for new, but that you can get through a product change (like the Chase Ritz Carlton card) and there may be times that you want to convert a card that’s no longer useful to you to one whose benefits are more appealing.
Citi has long been the most flexible bank when it comes to product changing, as it has allowed customers to do it across families of cards. For instance, you could change from a card that earns Citi ThankYou points to a card that earns American Airlines AAdvantage miles or vice versa. This is something that almost no other issuer allows.
However, we recently got an e-mail from a reader named Amit who wanted to change his AAdvantage Executive Elite card to a no-annual-fee Citi Double Cash, which earns ThankYou points. However, when he called, the rep informed him that he could only downgrade to an “AAdvantage Ally” card, which included AA or (oddly enough) Costco cards. He tried to hang up and call again, but the second rep told him the same thing.
Poking around FlyerTalk and reddit, I’m seeing numerous similar data points. It seems like Citi has either stopped or significantly limited the ability to product change between AAdvantage mile and ThankYou point-earning cards.
I wanted to try this out myself, so I called Citi to ask about changing a Citi Strata Premier card to an AAdvantage card. Two different reps told me the same thing as we heard from Amit, although in reverse: that it was no longer possible. When trying to move my wife’s AAdvantage Platinum Select to a ThankYou point card, I struck out twice as well.
We need data points
It’s too early to tell for sure whether this is just a momentary glitch or a permanent policy change. We’d love to hear from folks who have recently attempted to do the AAdvantage/ThankYou switcheroo, either successfully or unsuccessfully.
Our hope is that this isn’t a permanent change. Citi’s longstanding product change flexibility was a great feature of holding the bank’s cards. It would be a shame to see that eroded.
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