✈ Outage Flight Cancellations Top 7K, How to Earn 30K Points With 1 Phone Call & More News From TPG ✈

July 22, 2024

Airlines grapple with IT outage fallout

by Tarah Chieffi, Senior writer

Happy Monday! Unless, of course, you’re one of the many travelers whose plans were beset by the global IT infrastructure outage that has now led to more than 7,000 flight cancellations worldwide.

While many airlines were affected in the initial days of the outage, it’s now Delta Air Lines that is struggling the most, with CEO Ed Bastian issuing an apology Sunday after the carrier canceled more than 4,000 flights over the weekend.

Here’s the latest on the situation and tips to follow if you are affected by serious delays or cancellations.

We’ll continue to monitor for updates on this, but in the meantime, let’s talk about how you may be able to get something out of that old credit card you were thinking about canceling …

Whether you have five credit cards or 15, it’s smart to occasionally evaluate what’s in your wallet and the value each card provides. Even if a card made sense for you when you applied, you may find that you no longer use it to its full potential or it has perks that overlap with other cards you have.

Before you cancel or downgrade a card, consider asking for a retention offer. Retention offers are tools card issuers sometimes use to persuade customers to keep cards open longer. They can take the form of statement credits, bonus points, or annual fee waivers or reductions.

I recently reached out to American Express because I was on the fence about keeping my Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card after the annual fee increase and benefits changes earlier this year. I asked if there were any retention offers available that could help offset the annual fee and give me more time to evaluate the card’s value. The agent offered me 30,000 Delta SkyMiles after I spend $2,000 or more on the card within the next three months. Based on TPG’s July 2024 valuations, the offer I received is worth $345.

Other TPG staffers have received similar offers on their cards, including 50,000 American Express Membership Rewards points after spending $4,000 in three months on The Platinum Card® from American Express and 30,000 Amex points after spending $3,000 in three months on the American Express® Gold Card.

Ready to learn more about retention offers? Here are a few more helpful tips:

If you found these tips helpful, we’d love to hear from you. Reply to this email and let us know if you were able to successfully negotiate a retention offer instead of closing your card.

See you back here tomorrow!

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Photo Credit: MEGAN VARNER/GETTY IMAGES.

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