I just got off the phone with Citibank. This was one long tiresome negotiation we put each other through. And my misery is finally over.

A few months ago Citibank and Jet Airways started taking away the benefits on the Citibank-Jet Airways Credit Card offered in India. I wrote about them and also contacted the Airline and the Bank to have a hard look at the whole setup and see what the competition was doing. As expected, I drew a blank there.I used to love this card since it contributed quite a bit to giving me my free round trip to the USA in Jet Airways Premiere Class this year, but the new terms did not look attractive anymore. It meant spending double the money to get an upgrade voucher, and with upgrades on Jet Airways international being very hard to come by, it looked like a useless thing to do.

As a result, I saw increasingly no use of keeping this card in my pocket anymore. It was there, but it was hardly being used. I was increasingly turning to my American Express cards (the Kingfisher AX specially, which gives you complimentary Gold status, a free 11,000 miles to start with, 2 free domestic RT tickets and 1 mile per INR 40 spent).  Though now I think I like the AX Gold Card better since I don’t have to compulsorily convert my MR points only into KF miles. And it also throws free MR points my way for shopping on weekends.

Citibank made me call them 10 times over 15 days and everytime they asked why I wanted to close the card, I told them the same reasons I have explained in this space before, including the devaluation of benefits. Most people at Citi were not appreciating the decision but wanted to retain me nevertheless. Eventually, I had to hit the hammer on their head today, calling them again to either cancel the card or somehow just let me go. 😉

Being the decade old customer I am with them, clearly it was not easy for them. So we discussed another proposal to switch me to the Citibank Ultima card, however, while I was pondering over the proposal, another miles oriented card came into the picture. And that is what I got, though I’ll be happy to write more about it once I get the package on hand with the interesting offers inside!

For now, it is bye bye to Jet Airways Citibank CC, you were once loved, but no more are a dear friend! Sigh 🙁