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Let's Talk Credit Card Retention Offers

DrSaichand

TF Buzz
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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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1.Spend 1.5L in next 90 days (starts from today to Feb 13th ) for full fee waiver

2.Pay 50% fee ( Rs 2950 credit)

3.Pay full fee they will credit around 10k points ( Rs 2500 benefit)

Called the cc today and Got the above offers

And I opted for the option 1
When is your renewal days and does that 1.5L spend count toward milestones
 
Sharing my experience in terms of retention offers offered by different banks :

Axis: Closed my paid Flipkart when it was being offered as LTF. I called them to convert it to LTF, but they denied it and instead offered me a fee reversal. I declined as I wanted space for Airtel Axis and had Myzone and ACE, and by that time, my brother also acquired Flipkart Axis, so I went ahead and closed it.

Closed my mother's MYZONE LTF through chat. They asked me the reason, I told them that I needed to close a joint bank account and the bank employee said that the card needed to be closed before they could take the request for closure. So, the chat agent took the request and closed the card did not offer any retention.

So, overall I had a good experience with Axis, they do offer good retention offer mostly with equivalent points or reverse the fees.

SBI: Got SimplyClick LTF after 3 years of usage, after placing the closure request in the app and negotiating with the cc. Initially, they offered me fees waiver but I insisted for LTF, checking on my good spends they agreed. I had a great experience with the retention offer.

BOB: Asked for fees reversal paid BOB Select over email, and they agreed and even said it's LTF. But charges are levied every year so I forward that email to cc and ask for fees reversal every year. Not bad for a PSU bank but it could been better if they had made it LTF directly.

RBL: Tried to close my RBL Platinum Delight over call when I was trying to get Bookmyshow Play card they offered me 3000 reward points and I took it. Later on BMS Play card got devalued and I lost interest in that card. Still kept this card for occasional RBL offers.

SCB: I tried to close Titatinum Rewards multiple times but they offered me fees reversal and 500 cashback. Eventually, I upgraded to Manhattan, I did not negotiate anything as they offered equivalent points, and after some months I upgraded to Smart card. I was charged with joining fees. Called the cc for fees waiver, they initially did not agree and said that it was only possible for annual fees and not for joining fees. So, I asked cc to close the card and then the call was transferred to the retention team and they asked the reason for the closure of the card, I said I was not happy with joining fees. They took the request to revert it. I kept the card. Later on, I upgraded to Ultimate on a split basis with Smart card. In the meantime, my Smart card annual spends already went over Rs. 1.2 lacs so I did not have to negotiate this year 🙂. It's a decent card but that min redemption of Rs. 2500 is a pain. Planning to negotiate Ultimate next year, used it for some heavy offline spends this year. Need to think where I can redeem the points though, given their poor catalog but that is also a point for me to negotiate next year. Overall, SCB offered me a very satisfying retention experience.

HDFC : As the forum members suggested, you would have probably the poorest experience from HDFC when it comes to retention offer. I got paid Swiggy and well compensated with a Rs.850 Swiggy voucher and Swiggy one membership. But it is now offered as LTF to new customers, I have emailed them but they are not willing to convert it to LTF. I also have salary account and LTF Regalia First and LTF Tata Neu Infinity. The majority of the spending is now with Tata Neu. I will try my luck with cc once the annual fees are charged and see if they offer reversal. If not, I still might keep it as my overall return is more than annual fees. I have got good usage in Swiggy and Pharmeasy(10x). Let me know if anyone is able to convert paid Swiggy into LTF.
 
Let me know if anyone is able to convert paid Swiggy into LTF.
Thanks for sharing the detailed events. I got my paid Swiggy and Neu infinity both converted to LTF.
But I didn't do anything specific. Just wrote a mail to customer care and asked them to convert to LTF, they denied 2-3 times.
I escalated to priorityredressal 2-3 times, and finally they agreed.
Nothing specific in the request just asked them to convert to LTF because they are giving it for new customers.
Maybe they evaluated my spending criteria or some other thing and decided or it is just luck.
 
Thanks for sharing the detailed events. I got my paid Swiggy and Neu infinity both converted to LTF.
But I didn't do anything specific. Just wrote a mail to customer care and asked them to convert to LTF, they denied 2-3 times.
I escalated to priorityredressal 2-3 times, and finally they agreed.
Nothing specific in the request just asked them to convert to LTF because they are giving it for new customers.
Maybe they evaluated my spending criteria or some other thing and decided or it is just luck.
Can you share details, even my swiggy hdfc is paid. I want to make it ltf. Holding millenia and tata neu both ltf.
 
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