April 1, 2022|AMEX, Retention Bonus

by Eric Lipkind

American Express has been very generous with retention offers in the past, while others have not (I’m looking at you, Chase).    You can get a retention offer by calling the retention line at (800) 492-3945, saying you were just charged the annual fee, which is a lot.   You then ask if there is a retention offer for keeping the card open.   They will then bore you with the listing of the card’s benefits.  Just say you are aware of the benefits and ask again if there is a retention bonus.   This strategy will work with the chat feature as well.   You will most likely be presented with an offer.  After an offer is given, always ask if there are any other offers in case a better one comes up.  Additionally, the offers change daily, so try again on another day if you don’t like the offer presented. 

My latest retention offers are:

Platinum Business Card – $695

Gold Business Card – $250

Platinum Card – $150

This was an easy $1,095 earned over the course of 15 minutes.

I asked if there were any Membership Rewards points offers for retention and was told that they are no longer giving points for retention bonuses with travel down.   This was a change from the past.  Last year I received 50,000 points on one card with no spend requirement.   This was interesting to me. 

In the end, the offers given made it worthwhile to keep cards open while still paying the annual fee for another year.