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Let's Talk Credit Card Retention Offers

DrSaichand

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This is my first ever post in this community but I have been following TechnoFino team for long time so please pardon my mistakes if any and do correct me.

Banks spend a lot to gain a customer on their credit card portfolio. A lot of work goes behind Marketing, onboarding & maintaining a trustful customer who brings good revenue to the bank and most likely pay all the dues on time. But at times when customer want to break this relationship by closing the card, banks offer retention offers to make him stay with the bank. Though this sounds odd to few this is an ultimate trump card a credit card company plays to stop a leaving customer. Banks does this because it costs banks much less to offer incentives to leaving customer for their retention rather than the cost of accruing a new customer, that too in this competitive market. This also doesn't mean banks offer these offers to each and every customer that exploits this raw nerve.

Generally these offers are not published/discussed and further they vary from customer to customer based on their relationship with the lender. So I thought of initiating a thread to accumulate various credit card retention offers for long time so here we go please share your card retention offers of various banks credit cards under this thread so that we can better our portfolio further lets find out which bank goes a extra mile to retain their customer. Here's my retention offer.

YES BANK
**************
I have been with Yes Bank since 2017 and got Yes bank Unsecured credit card in the year 2018. Initially my card was Yes Rewards Credit card offered as a pre approved bases on my savings account and I had instantly accepted the offer as I was a student at that time. Yes Bank card being my first ever credit card, I got a credit limit of 20,000 and I was ok with it as my requirements were minimum.

By the time I graduated my usage and spends gradually increased and credit limit requirement started to rise. After the devaluation following the Yes Bank crisis the card offers and reward points were reduced to so low that it didn't made any sense to hold the Yes Bank Cards. In addition to that inspite of being loyal to bank and with absolute zero late payments Yes Bank used to offer poor credit limit enhancements of 3,000 - 5000 for every 8-12 months, but they offer credit card upgrades every 6 months so I was adjusted to it. last straw that broke the camels back was in the year 2021 I got my second credit card i.e Amazon Pay ICICI Credit card with the limit of 2,50,000 and instantly I called Yes bank to close my card as credit limit on my Yes Edge CC was 32,000 at the time of closure and I was hardly able to buy even a mid range phone with it under Bank offers (knowing card closure effects my credit score in bad way) they took the request and I thought card was closed.

but after 15-20 days later I got a call from their Credit card retention team and they offered me direct upgrade from Yes Edge CC to Yes First Preferred CC with 1000 rupees worth reward points in statement with absolutely zero annual fee. I was amazed and decided to remain with them. But eventually after a year due to my other banks cards portfolio I hold by the mid of 2022 I finally closed my Yes Bank card and Yes they again called me and tried to persuaded me to at least stay on card to avail longe benefits, but as I travel near to nill I have denied their 2nd time card retention offer and closed the card. my card closure is solely regarding my poor Credit Limit offered by the bank inspite being with them for almost three years.

SBI
*****

Yes you heard it right, SBI...!!! Suprisingly I also had good retention offer experience on SBI. My father applied for SBI Cashback card via website and as he is salaried, during initial launch of Cashback card there was a glitch for salaried people so SBI agent came home to collect documents. After all formalities they issued Simply save card fraudulently and we have followed up with the SBI customer care but no action was taken.

As my father already holds SBI Elite which is 3 years old, we requested them to close this Simply save card. Immediately within 30 minutes of raising card closure request SBI Card retention team called us and reverted annual fee of 500+18%GST and told to retain card, after 30 min of persuasion I have accepted for the same but my father was unaware of this.

But the immediate next month my father has placed card closure request without my knowledge and again card retention team contacted him and enquired why did we again placed card closure request inspite of annual fee refund for which he also asked them to deduct the fees again and close the card due to bad onboarding experience and he also told about the mis-selling issue and also explained Simply save variant is not that useful in the current card portfolio which he holds, after enquiring about all cards he is holding and spend pattern (which is quite wierd from their end) immediately they have credited 20,000 reward points even without asking in SBI Elite Card rewards account on call and asked to Check the same in the app they also promised that after 6 months variant change option will be enabled for Cashback card too so that we can change the existing simplysave to Cashback.

Being infamous for their slack nature SBI Card retention team gave good offers inspite of placing back to back card closure requests.
they reverted 499+18% GST = 588 (Annual Fees) and 20000 reward points = 5000 Rupees total of 5588

It took a while to understand this is for real 😛 🙂 But this doesn't warrant that SBI does the same with every customer as my father card has spends of 12L almost every year on Elite since a couple of years so that history might have helped him getting a good retention offer for the other card of SBI.


So that it here's my experience of Card retention offer with Yes Bank and SBI do share yours if you have any in the thread below. Sorry for the long post in advance.
 
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Call axis cc and ask them to transfer call to retention team.
If they ask last dour digit of your card give that which has 0 outstanding.
Don't share your issue with them just tell them that you would only talk to retention team.
Once the call is transferred ask them to close your vistara card and refund the fee as you have not done any transaction after fee is charged.
Just record your call.
Ezz
Thank you! I did just that - called again today and asked to transfer to the Retention team. Told the agent about my issue to either make it free for this year by reversing the fees, or cancel my card. He offered me a retention bonus of 3,000 points instead if I continue.
In hindsight, since I ended up receiving the reversal of joining fees last year, it makes some sense of continuing with the card now even though I couldn't utilise my business class voucher and it got wasted. With 3,000 CV points retention + one more year of being CV gold + 1 business class voucher, I changed my mind to cose the card and took the retention offer. No idea how its gonna go for my Magnus that may be due for annual fees in March 2024; might request for cancelation next month to ensure similar issues do not crop again, but I doubt I'll receive any retention on Magnus since my spends have only been ~ 5 Lacs on Magnus.
Thanks again to everyone who was considerate to share their experience and offer tips on how to navigate this situation.
 
Thank you! I did just that - called again today and asked to transfer to the Retention team. Told the agent about my issue to either make it free for this year by reversing the fees, or cancel my card. He offered me a retention bonus of 3,000 points instead if I continue.
In hindsight, since I ended up receiving the reversal of joining fees last year, it makes some sense of continuing with the card now even though I couldn't utilise my business class voucher and it got wasted. With 3,000 CV points retention + one more year of being CV gold + 1 business class voucher, I changed my mind to cose the card and took the retention offer. No idea how its gonna go for my Magnus that may be due for annual fees in March 2024; might request for cancelation next month to ensure similar issues do not crop again, but I doubt I'll receive any retention on Magnus since my spends have only been ~ 5 Lacs on Magnus.
Thanks again to everyone who was considerate to share their experience and offer tips on how to navigate this situation.
Also Axis CC told me yesterday that retention offer can be availed only on 1 of the multiple cards that we hold, so most likely there wont be any retention offer for you on the Magnus
 
Successfully converted my Yes Bank Prosperity Rewards Credit card from Paid to LTF through retention team. I was about to raise request for card upgradation as Yes bank usually offers upgraded card LTF if existing is LTF but they have specifically mentioned that Any upgrade in future will be chargeable. Any body got upgraded card as LTF where old one was not originally issued as LTF.
 
Successfully converted my Yes Bank Prosperity Rewards Credit card from Paid to LTF through retention team. I was about to raise request for card upgradation as Yes bank usually offers upgraded card LTF if existing is LTF but they have specifically mentioned that Any upgrade in future will be chargeable. Any body got upgraded card as LTF where old one was not originally issued as LTF.

that you have to fight for every bank.
 
Requested for MyZone LTF conversion, PNO denied after a month time.

Threatened to close my card & salary account if they dont process my request.
They initiated card closure request, without me raising it... it was just a threat.
Got call from retention team, they offered to reverse fees and offered edge points. I stood my ground and they converted to LTF.

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Requested for MyZone LTF conversion, PNO denied after a month time.

Threatened to close my card & salary account if they dont process my request.
They initiated card closure request, without me raising it... it was just a threat.
Got call from retention team, they offered to reverse fees and offered edge points. I stood my ground and they converted to LTF.

are you actively using this card now any other axis cards?
 
Sbi is converting my vistara card to life time free, is it worth it to do so?
Will I still get the renewal vistara tickets?
@Mars_rover I think they wont provide any tickets on the annual/renewal fee....but you can continue to get the mielstone based tickets.
The offer is good (and not extraordinary), as they return back a ticket, which is more than the renewal fee. and it depends on if you stay in Vistara route city.

Btw, please share your journey of getting this card as LTF
 
@Mars_rover I think they wont provide any tickets on the annual/renewal fee....but you can continue to get the mielstone based tickets.
The offer is good (and not extraordinary), as they return back a ticket, which is more than the renewal fee. and it depends on if you stay in Vistara route city.

Btw, please share your journey of getting this card as LTF
So basically, I used this card to order from Amazon during the GIF sale
Now they deducted around 1000₹ because its their policy that we can get either instant discounts or reward points, so as points can’t be reversed so they reversed the amount.
So I called upon customer care and asked them to close the card, so they looked upon and said that this card can be converted to LTF.
I think I’ll take this offer.
 
I have 3 axis cards. Airtel (chargeable), Atlas (chargeable) and Myzone (LTF). I called for Myzone cancellation but they gave me an option not to close and you will get 2500 edge rewards points. Want to know if I redeem 2500 edge rewards points then would I able to close myzone after 2-3 days of redemption or will I have to wait for long time to close myzone?

How to redeem 2500 edge reward points to get maximum benefit since I have axis atlas?
I also got 2500 edge rewards credited to my Savings Account against Myzone LTF. I already have 1800 reward points on CC.
How to redeem all these, I am unable to find Amazon voucher for less than 10000 points?
I'll close the card and apply Atlas.
 
Tried to do annual fee reversal ritual with SBI Tata Card, was offered LTF Conversion and naturally took it - need to wait till next month for reality check (can never trust bank agents fully).

On a different note, anyone ever received retention offers from StanC or at least an option to flip cards ?
 
Any tips on converting SBI cashback card LTF? Had this card for slightly over a year now, spends were above 3L during the first year. Don't want to try the usual card closure request since the card offers decent value and if they proceed with closure then it'd be huge bummer.
 
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