Prestige Loophole: get paid $100 annually to hold this card!

So you know how Prestige costs $450 in AF but if you apply in branch it only costs $350 even if you don’t have Citi Gold status? On top of that because Prestige has an easy $250 airline credit, the effective annual fee can be $100. But what if I told you there is a way to make it even cheaper? Instead of paying $100 to Citi, would it not be cooler if Citi paid you $100?

The trick is to lower your credit limit to $2000. 2k is the lowest you can go and this can be done through a simple chat. Once you have done this your next annual fee will be $150 but because there is $250 airline credit, Citi is practically paying you $100 to keep this amazing card.

Oh and if you’re near renewal (hell 6 months away from renewal is fine as well as long as you space out acceptance of retention offer by about 12 months) don’t forget to get a retention offer. I got 10k offer after $3k spend in 6 months which is another $100-125 free money. This $150 (or to be precise -$100) AF trick worked for me on 2nd renewal but I’m guessing this trick will work as soon as your 1^st AF is due.

My 2 cents:

At the moment this loophole is one reddit thread away from being viral. Once that happens Citi is bound to close this loophole. Citi ought to also eventually do a mass fix on $350 loophole by enforcing Citi Gold status requirement, not offering it anymore, or even sending out a year advance notice on AF increase from $350 to $450.  That said, I don’t think anyone using this trick will face adverse action because (1) everyone who lowers AF isn’t necessarily looking to abuse a loophole (2) folks have forever abused AA loophole and gotten away with it. I won’t be surprised if extreme cases of (2) eventually face some consequence but Citi will probably manage to mess up that as well.