Barclay’s Aviator Waived Annual Fee
Retention phone calls, who here besides me hates calling in to the retention line? Before you cancel a card in the future, it might be worth sending a secure message instead asking for a retention offer or waived annual fee. In fact, I’m going to try this before I even call for a retention offer, why not save the time? Here’s a quick report of my (very painless) experience with my Barclay’s AAdvantage Aviator Business Mastercard.
Just to give you a little background, I currently have a few American Airlines cards and 4 total Barclay’s cards. The only business card I have is the AAviator business so I’m not sure how much of an impact closing one card could have on my profile with Barclay’s. I usually keep their personal cards open for at least two years before cancelling them in an effort to avoid poking the bear.
Also Check Out: (Updated) Current Retention Offer: Amex, Chase & Citi Retention Offer Data Points
AAdvantage Aviator Business Overview
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- Current Welcome Offer: Earn up to 75,000 miles
- Earn 65,000 miles after spending $1,000 in the first 90 days. Earn 10,000 miles when a purchase is made on an employee card.
- Get 2X AAdvantage miles on eligible American Airlines purchases and office supply, telecom and car rental merchants.
- Current Welcome Offer: Earn up to 75,000 miles
- 5% AAdvantage mileage bonus earned every year after your account anniversary date based on the total number of miles earned using your card.
- Companion certificate for $99
- Free checked bag, priority boarding and in-flight savings
- 3k EQMs after 30K spend for those chasing elite status
Considerations
The only reason I would have wanted to hang onto the card this year is that one of the main benefits of the card is a 5% anniversary mile bonus. Each anniversary year you get a 5% bonus of the number of AAdvantage miles you earned with this specific card. Since I earned a welcome offer on the card this year and I was chasing American Airlines status last year I put a decent amount of spend on the card. Normally I would consider keeping a $95 AF card for some bonus miles but I swore this year I would do a better job of ridding myself of unnecessary annual fees. Plus I made the switch to Delta at the end of 2019 so I really don’t need these benefits right now.
The Outcome: Barclay’s Aviator Waived Annual Fee
I decided to send them a message through the website and let them know that the annual fee was charged and I wasn’t using the card. I said that I would like to cancel unless the fee could be waived. Sure enough the next day I saw there was a negative balance on the card and they just waived the annual fee without even sending me a message. This might be the easiest interaction I’ve ever had with a bank. So I’m happy to hold the card for an additional year at no cost and get my annual bonus miles.
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Attempted this through the portal first, and then over the phone. Was denied on both fronts and was told that they look for a minimum monthly spend of $4500/mo since account opening in order to waive the annual fee.
$4500 per Month? My Monthly Expenses (even if I put everything on 1 Card) aren’t even half of That.
So I jumped the gun here, this morning a manager called me back and after reviewing my account waived the fee!
They would NOT do this for me, I just tried today. I am setting on 38k of miles and hate to just cancel but I’m probably going to do just that. I have had this card for years and never asked for anything!
Barclays will do this once on this card.