For the first time ever, I’ve had a credit card account closed on me against my will. I feel so rejected…
My Citi Rewards+ Card was closed
This morning I woke up to an email from Citi with the following subject line:
We’ve closed your account
Well that’s not good! I went to Citi messaging center, and was informed that my Citi Rewards+ Card had been closed due to lack of activity:
Hi, Benjamin. We frequently review cardmember accounts – a recent review of your account shows that it has been inactive and there is a current balance of $0. Due to this, we had to close your Citi Rewards+ Mastercard account. You can no longer make transactions on this account.
Any ThankYou Points you’ve earned through the date your account was closed will be transferred to your ThankYou member account. Points available for redemption can be redeemed for 60 days after the date the account was closed.
Well that’s sad, because this card added real value for me!
Why do I want this card if I didn’t use it?
Logically you’d say “well that’s not much of a loss, you weren’t using the card!” But the truth is that the Citi Rewards+ Card is part of my overall Citi credit card strategy:
- I also have the Citi Prestige Card and Citi Double Cash, which I spend a significant amount on
- The Citi Rewards+ Card has no annual fee, and when you have the card you can get 10% of the points back on the first 100,000 ThankYou points you redeem every year
- In other words, having this no annual fee card earns me the equivalent of 10,000 ThankYou points per year, which is awesome
So while there wasn’t much incentive for me to spend money on the card given the other Citi cards I have, it was still a valuable part of my overall Citi strategy.
Are accounts frequently closed due to inactivity?
Over the years I’ve often received the question of whether credit cards can be closed due to lack of activity. From the perspective of credit card issuers, it makes sense — there’s exposure associated with having open credit lines, and it’s reasonable for credit card companies to reduce them, especially during these uncertain times.
However, I have over two dozen credit cards, many of which I almost never use. And up until this point I’ve never had a card closed on me due to lack of activity. This was a first for me.
I guess the moral of the story is to charge a couple of purchases to a card every so often if you want to make sure this doesn’t happen. Then again, my credit card strategy is already complicated enough, especially with all the temporary bonuses we’re seeing on cards right now due to coronavirus, so I can’t say I really have any regrets.
Is there any recourse when your account is closed?
Here’s a question to anyone who may have been in this situation with Citi before, since this is my first time dealing with this — is there any recourse? Can I call up Citi and say “please reopen the account, I promise to use it more?” Is there no hope, or is there another strategy? For what it’s worth, I spend a significant amount of money on my other Citi cards. At a minimum, is there a way to have the credit line transferred to another one of my Citi cards?
Ultimately it’s not the end of the world to have the account closed, but if I can avoid it I’d like to.
Bottom line
While I knew accounts could be closed by credit card companies due to lack of activity, it had never happened to me before — today was a first. My Citi Rewards+ Card was closed because I hadn’t used it in many months, though it’s still a card I benefited from significantly, given what a good complement it was to my other Citi cards
Has anyone else recently had a credit card account closed due to lack of activity?
Membership is free and takes no more information than commenting as a guest. Earn status points for good contributions, and see fewer ads as your status grows.