The $550 annual fee posted to my Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card‘s most recent statement.
So, you know what that means: retention call time! And I was especially interested to hear what they would say after the huge Delta SkyMiles changes start taking effect next year.
Did I Plan to Keep the Card Anyway?
I fully planned to not cancel and keep the card open.
Why?
- The Sky Club visit rationing doesn’t kick in until February 1, 2025. I still have over a year to knock myself out visiting Sky Clubs.
- Plus, I’ll earn $2,500 MQD just for holding the card.
- We still find some value out of the Companion Certificate.
My Reasons for Cancelling the Card
I recommend writing down the exact reasons why you want to cancel a card — before you make the call to customer customer. Saying, “I want to cancel because A, B, C, D…” is more effective (and polite) than a general “Because it sucks!”
Here are my reasons:
Not Thrilled With Delta Changes
Yes, Delta updated the pretty massive overhaul of its SkyMiles program originally announced on September 13.
But I firmly believe the updates are damage control before Delta (gradually?) increases the Medallion Qualification Dollar (MQD) requirements to what they originally planned.
No More Status Boost and MQD Waiver
The bonus Medallion Qualification Miles (MQM) after spending increments of $30,000 and Delta Amex MQD Waiver were major benefits of holding the Reserve card.
Those are dead as of New Year’s Day 2024.
Card Membership Downgraded for Upgrades
Holding a Delta Reserve card currently puts Medallion members in the third spot for complimentary upgrades. That slides to fourth place next year.
Atrocious Points Earnings
The Delta Reserve Business Amex earns 3X on Delta purchases and 1X on all other eligible purchases.
That’s horrible.
Once I reach whatever my spending goals are for my business Reserve card, I put it away and spend on cards with better earnings such as the Ink Cash.
Lounge Changes
We covered this above.
Annual fee
The $550 annual fee isn’t insignificant — but it’s not difficult to earn back with the Companion Certificate and Sky Club access.
Here’s How the Call Went
I don’t know about you but whenever I call Amex, I consistently receive excellent and friendly service. This call continued the streak.
The Amex rep gave me the usual, Oh, we’re sorry to see you go! Why are you unhappy with your card?… when I told him I wanted to cancel the card.
I gave him the reasons listed above — and acknowledged the Sky Club changes don’t take effect until February 2025.
He understood all of them and said the Delta changes were “a shock” to people at Amex.
The rep used the Companion Certificate as a major selling point. I replied that yes, the Companion Certificate is great — when I can find eligible flights.
He asked if I still wanted to cancel the card — and he’d proceed with the cancellation process, starting with some verbiage he’d have to read.
I asked if there were any retention offers available that might persuade me to keep the card.
For the second year in a row, I was told there were not.
He asked if I wanted to continue the process.
But then something unexpected happened: I thought, yeah, you know what? Maybe I should.
The Companion Certificate is already in my SkyMiles account and won’t be clawed back. I already have Sky Club access with my Amex Platinum and Amex Business Platinum cards. I have a couple of Delta trips scheduled this year and would like a shot at upgrades — though they’re not crucial.
I told him I wanted a little more time to think about it.
Final Approach
The annual fee posted to my Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card and I made my yearly retention call. Unfortunately, Amex didn’t have anything juicy to offer me.
I almost canceled the card — and still might and just get it again next year.
I hope my bullet points are helpful to you if you plan to make a retention call.
If you already gave Amex a holler, did you receive a retention offer? If so, what was it? Please share in the Comments section below!
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Thank you: this is discouraging news!
Like you, no success with the Delta Reserve card. However, I have had good success with the NON Delta variety. My wife just got a $350 statement credit for the Platinum Business card after $5K spend. I got a similar offer on my card last year. Amex is probably paying too much out to Delta to make retention offers worth it for them.
Thanks for the data points, Steve!
For me there would be two reasons. One is the astronomical spending requirement for MQD. One of the reasons I got the cards was to make the MQM requirement, which was sufficient then to get Diamond. Even with several international trips, with discounted pricing it’s hard to make the 15K level. And if you do make the MQD waiver, all the MQD attainment is worthless as it doesn’t carry over.
Then there’s the fact that the main benefit for being Diamond, the GUCs, has also been devalued, by making it harder to get into Delta One and making them expire a year earlier. I’m having to use 2 of mine on domestic trips because I didn’t use them this year (even though my 2020, 2021 and two of imy 2022 ones were used before the original expiration date before Delta extended them). I could have used them all if I’d known a few months earlier that their life was going to be shortened.
I’m not loving this new AX era. No retention offers on my personal Plat this week, dispute the ridiculous $695 fee for that coupon book. (The rep said she’d offer me a special deal and allow MR redemption at 1¢ to pay the AF.) The fees on all of these cards have jumped to the highest ever, and I understand why many now say they’re proceeding with cancelling.
People pay “fees” just to have a certain credit card? I guess a sucker is born everyday.
1. The correct saying is, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
2. Suckers are the ones who don’t make efforts to earn back a card’s annual fee.
Same card, same answer (NO DEAL) about two months ago, so I cancelled. Will get a different card in 2023 (Delta Personal Plat or Reserve) to get the spending bonus miles and MQD waver. I have almost 120k MQM’s (with all the pandemic holds on expiring MQMs), and don’t want them to go to waste. The companion certs are a joke. Only good on short flights unless you book way in advance, and that doesn’t work for our travel patterns. The Alaska and American companion certs are much better, you can actually use them to go where you want to go!
Thanks for the data point!
After second call (first one last week) I finally got a retention offer to keep my AMEX Platinium open for the second year…….”Yes, I am a retention specialist and because you are such a valued Card Member, you can earn 30,000 Membership Rewards® points after you spend $3,000 or more on purchases on your Platinum Card® account within 3 months of accepting this offer. The 30,000 Membership Rewards® points will be credited to your account 8 to 12 weeks after the purchase requirement has been met. This is our way of saying thank you for keeping your Platinum Card® account open today. It took an hour on the phone with them today, and was like a pulling teeth. But I got it done, and will keep it another year.
Thanks, Peggy!
I made my yearly call on my Amex Plat Biz card. The guy told me the retention offers ended yesterday and he wasn’t seeing anything. He also said try back in 30 days and that is the time they usually add new ones. I had a week before the fee was due, called back 3 more time on a different day (I think I got the same guy 2-3 times), then cancelled.
Thanks, Keyser!
It’s interesting that the rep said the retention offers ended, as if that was across the board. I did have an offer for my HH Aspire on the same call where there was nothing for my Plat, so clearly they aren’t all gone.
Note that it is not necessary to cancel before the annual fee hits your account. Amex has a 30 day window where you can still cancel and get a fee refund.
Right. I think I mentioned that…?
The real devaluation on all Delta Amex cards was when they cut the spending threshold bonuses to just MQMs and did away with redeemable Skymiles as part of the bonus. The 15,000 redeemable bonus miles were worth $150 as Pay with Miles. Practically paid for the cards.
No retention offer for me either. And don’t forget to cancel.
PSA: You have 30 days to cancel the card. Beyond that you will be charged the full annual fee, no prorated refunds. Over 31 days will cost you the whole year. Not even many calls to many supervisors would prorate it.
It’s extremely difficult to even use the companion certificate with Delta. I’ve tried 7 times this year and still haven’t. Like you the long lines to get into the club make it impossible to use them, along with Delta’s short connection policy. I found it easier to cancel the card and switch to United. No long waits to get into the clubs.
I had a similar experience with an agent when I called in about my amex platinum card. However, after I said I want to cancel my card, they transferred me to the “membership consulting” team, which is apparently the team that has the retention offers, and they had one for me that was good enough for me to keep the card. So if you are ever talking to a clueless agent about retention, just ask to be transferred to membership consulting (or just ask immediately!).
Good tip! Thanks, Paul!
A huge advantage of the Business Reserve over the Personal Reserve is the 1.5x earnings on all purchases after $150k. Most people forget about this feature and it was not mentioned above. The Business Platinum gets 1.5x on all purchases over $5,000 which is very rare for me to spend $5,000+ in one transaction.
The reason I didn’t mention it is because I don’t hit $150k in purchases on it.
I have made two retention calls for the Amex Personal Platnium. Went through the whole spiel…..they didn’t care. No retention offers available.
No retention offers. Cancelled both Delta Amex Platinum Business and Delta Amex Platinum. I had previously cancelled the Delta Amex Business Reserve, so I am just left with the Delta Amex Blue. Need to check if that one qualifies for free baggage check.
@Franco – You need the Gold Delta Amex or higher to get the free bag perk and the 15% off Skymiles on booking tickets. If you have not got the new card bonus for the business Delta Gold I would go for that card and dump blue.
Data Point: November 1st, 2023 Amex Delta Reserve personal card. Offered 70K Miles for a few thousand spend in 3 months. I declined. Rep says they will claw back the 30K Miles for retention offer received year prior. Need to keep account open for one year. Received 2022 rentention offer on November 5th, 2022. (seems it’s best to get retention right away when fee posts?). Kept card open and said I will call back November 6th to close account. Rep says offer may not be there when calling back.
November 6th – Called back. Received same retention offer of 70K miles. No clawback mentioned. Rep made a hard sell on trying to keep open the card going through every single item the card offers. I declined, and they went through closing account.
Thanks for the data points!
Looks like AX is “ripping the bandaid off” too. That’s fine, they can have it. I’m keeping the vanilla platinum until my renewal in 1/2025. Then. It’s. Gone. Unless they waive 100% of the annual fee which they absolutely won’t. Sure I used Skyclubs a lot but you know what else I did a lot?…..purchased Delta tickets often at 10-20% premium over the other guys.
The platinum now is just sn expensive Entertainment Book. And spending money on things that you normally wouldn’t have bought just to “make up” for the fee doesn’t make sense to most intelligent people. My value was simply the skyclubs. Now that’s gone, I see no reason to keep it. The other “benefits” are either worthless or a pain in the a** to use. AMEX has decided to move from the wealthy traveler/spender to the sub-prime market…..you can see it by the quality (lack) of clientele in the lounges.
Amen!
Called to Cancel. Received a retention offer of 60k miles after spending $4k in 3 months. Took it.
“I don’t know about you but whenever I call Amex, I consistently receive excellent and friendly service. This call continued the streak.”
@Chris Carley, I am happy that you have had an overall good experience with their service. During the vast majority of times I’ve called the AMEX DL Reserve line, and most recently two weeks ago, I’ve had to double-check that I input the correct number, as I got smarmy and generally unhelpful service from agents I’d suspect were not based in the USA.
Thanks all for the data points – and I’ll make my call after Thanksgiving.
I have both the Reserve personal and Reserve business. I spend $300-$400k on them combined per year. The reason I got the business reserve a few years ago was to double up on MQMs (60k MQMs on each card after $120k spend on each). With the new 2024 MQD system I no longer need 2 reserve cards plus I will have 3 extended years of DM. I called to cancel my business reserve and they offered me 25k SM after $5k spend. I already got the companion cert last month so I declined the offer as 25k SM for $550 isn’t worth it and closed the account.
I just canceled my Reserve business card. The only retention offers were a $40 courtesy credit or 25,000 SkyMiles after spending $5K. Since I plan to burn 100,000 MQMs for 2025 Platinum status, I see little reason to keep the card just for the companion certificate. I’ll pick up a Gold card the next time I plan to spend SkyMiles.
I also complained that my Reserve card and Platinum business and personal cards all have account numbers ending in 1000. Many vendors only display the last four digits of the card number and do not provide a way to add a nickname, so it can be hard to manage these cards. The agent assured me that having three different AMEX cards ending in 1000 was purely coincidence. However, wouldn’t the odds of that happening be about one in a billion? It seems like there must be another explanation. Anyway, now I only have two AMEX cards ending in 1000.
Duplicate card numbers has happened to me before. You can call and request new card numbers.