Credit Card Scam:How American Airlines & Citi Trick You into LOSING, Not Saving!

stuck in traffic for 30 or 40 minutes because I've traveled at a stupid time and when that happens I will Reserve that time to be on the phone and wait on hold for 30 minutes listening to crappy music so that I can cancel the card it's worth it to me I know I'm going to be spending that time anyway so I might as well get one or $200 off but I always cancel the card because I don't believe in having credit cards I try to avoid debt at all costs and above all many of these cards have shitty Annual fees so let's go over this so I decided that I wanted to take a flight and I looked at this up over here and as you can see if you go to look at a flight with American Airlines they will offer you a $200 statement credit if you sign up for this card it says up to a $200 statement credit and it but even though they say up to over here it says pay today $472 card statement credit minus $200 total after statement credit $272 so be clear here it doesn't say up to over here they're providing me a very clear equation of what the price is going to be and they're saying that I'm going to be getting 200 off total after statement credit 272 now I decided like an idiot that I was actually going to do this because again to be clear while Amazon has a lot of stuff wrong with them they actually do give you the amount that they say they will if you attempt to sign up for a card there are a lot of issues with Macy's but when I me to wy's I actually did get the discount as a result of signing up for the card that day I tried to sign up for the card and I got this in the mail it said we're unable to approve your application you have submitted multiple applications for credit and again this is really just so that I could get the discount I when you submit an application for credit they lower your credit score and since I don't use credit I buy everything that I own with cash I don't care credit scores are fundamentally useless to me so they declined the card all right no big deal I figure I'm not getting my 200 off I pay full price for my flight now check this out I get this in the mail just a few days ago saying welcome your next adventure is on I apparently have a new account from City Bank with a17 ,500 uh credit limit which is really weird because I just got this notice that I was declined not only on the website but also in the mail I did not screenshot it at the time because I didn't think that I'd be making a video on this because I thought that this was not a scam like an idiot but the when I did uh check out it did say that I that I was they couldn't give me the $200 now one of the things that I found the most interesting about this again they did actually send me a physical card this up here is my physical card that I have the ability to activate and I actually did activate ated and what you could see over here this is where the scam comes in so I didn't get my $200 discount when I signed up for the flight it said that I was declined the card so I figured I have no card I have nothing to worry about but then I get this in the mail that I was this close to throwing away because again I don't have an account at City Bank I don't do any business with City Bank I would imagine that this is Spam this is the type of thing that I would throw straight into my Shredder because I have no business with you but thank God I actually opened this one because as you can see over here there's an annual fee of $99 for this this credit card any credit card that is forcing you to pay money every year to use it in my opinion is a scam don't do that there are so many credit cards where you do not have to pay an annual fee to use it that this is a scam unless you have some sort of like you know credit score that's close to a Johnson City Tennessee area code and you're trying to build up your credit with a bank that will issue credit cards to people with very low credit scores do not do this and so what they did is they sneakily signed me up for a card that I was declined for and hoped that I would not notice so that they could fee me $99 a year but wait it gets better so when you log in I actually decided to activate this piece of just for the so that I could uh look into this it says that I have over here 3565 total Advantage miles so I'm thinking to myself okay they said I would get a $200 credit on my flight so again here the flight is 472 minus 200 272 let's take a look at this they said I have $ 3565 Mi so I decided to try looking this up by looking at the exact same flight if I Tred to book this flight it cost $473 I guess they're rounding it up there from 47260 and further if I take a look and try to book it with miles it'll say that I need 45,47 more miles in order to book the flight so the flight is 49,000 miles plus $5.60 so I decided to do a little bit of algebra here and I really burnt my brain to do it to figure out how much each individual mile is worth and what they gave me so please do check my work here as there is a chance that I am not as good at algebra as I think I am so m equals miles so 49,000 miles plus $5.60 is equal to $473 because that's what the flight would cost without the miles so I do the math here 49,000 m equal 467.7 a mile is equal to 467.7 divided by 49,000 which means a mile is equal to almost 1 cent when you multiply the 3565 miles I got by this you will see that the amount that I got was not the $200 that they claim that you're going to get over here it's actually $34 U and you know a fraction of a Cent and this is the end of my algebraic equation over here so now here's the part that I find the best again so you said I get $200 off I actually get $35 off or $34 off and at the end of the day I have to pay $99 a year in order to have this shitty this shitty card you see where I'm going with this now if I was actually getting $200 off but there was a $99 fee a year that would mean that for if I keep this card for one year I'm actually ahead of the game and if I I would have to have the card for three years to be behind the game uh but but again this is assuming that what they told me in their advertising was actually accurate and when looking at this you can't ignore the fact that what this says you're getting over here is statement credit to be clear card statement credit what this means over here is that this is a statement credit that you could use on anything not just American Airlines when you say statement credit on a credit card I imagine that means I can use this to buy groceries to pay my electric bill to buy a monitor from newegg.com or whatever the hell it is that I want to do when you give me airline miles this is that I need to use with with with American Airlines like you gave me miles which means I I can only use that to buy flights with this particular vendor rather than giving me a statement credit which I can use anywhere with this credit card which again in my opinion is false advertising and really shitty as you can see here in my flight receipt there is no credit on the flight as well so not only does the credit card not have a $200 statement credit but they also did not discount the flight because some of you may say leis if you check out I'm sure they'll give you the $200 off on the website you don't know that they're not doing that because you're not showing us here I don't want to buy another flight from American Airlines to create this video because this video will make $17 in monetization and that's not worth spending 4 into 70 bucks on a flight for however if you do look over here the flight that I booked several weeks ago does not have any statement credit I understand why this is a thing you know when you take a look there are many of these websites with with credit or buy now pay later where are actually telling businesses you should have buy now pay later you should have more acceptance of credit because people spend money on things they spend more money than they usually would when they can buy now and pay later as it says from airm again this is not some random study this is a firm's own advertising as a buy now pay later service this is their advertising to businesses High usage 76% of customers would have delayed or not purchased without a firm what this means is that when you give people credit they buy a lot of random crap that they other otherwise couldn't afford which is why they are willing to give you money upfront in order to hopefully collect more money from you in the long term when you buy stuff you can't afford fall behind on your payments and now have a 28% interest rate this is why I don't deal with debt this is why I don't again I have a very impulsive personality I have a personality that is prone to gambles to you know just general impulsivity and I realize that about myself which is why I do not have a credit card and I do not have debt there is only one time in my life that I have tried to have debt and it failed because New York City placed false leens and warrants on my business for taxes that I had already paid over 10 years ago and as I mentioned in this LA Fitness video a lot of people were saying in this video you know like you can't cancel like that you can't just make a privacy.com card and cancel it because they're going to send you to collections and ruin your credit and one of the things that I like about Not Giving two shits of a about a credit score or a credit rating is that these companies don't control me if you don't have a cancel button on your website and you require that I jump through hoops and go to the Post Office and certified mail a letter to cancel because I can't cancel on your website or on the phone I could simply cancel the privacy.com credit card that I utilize for your service and you could send me to collections all you want I don't give two shits of a you can make my credit score 300 for all I care it doesn't matter which is you know a nice way to live life I've tried to avoid uh being in debt again in in the very early days of my business I did not take out a loan I worked out of the park uh you know if you want to see the the the the office of rosid repair group back in the early days it looked like this again was not taking a business load was not taking out debt was just working in the park or in this absolute dumpster fire of an apartment this is where Mr Clinton lived over here this is where motherboards lived over here this is where the blackberries I was working on over here how the I managed to have five star reviews back in 2009 and 2008 is beyond me but I did if you take a look on Google you can arrange by oldest and you will see reviews going back to 14 years that were five stars again how the I manage that is beyond me but you get the point I I've tried to avoid debt in in in my life as often as possible and not just now that I'm doing better financially but also in the early days where I was just completely and utterly this really is not some sort of holier than now thing I I know myself well enough to know that I have less self-control when it comes to this than probably 99% of the people watching this video which is why I just opt out of it completely what they're doing is they're relying on on the fact that you're not going to read the terms of service they're relying on the fact that you're not going to see this an annual fee they're relying on the fact that you're not going to do the math and try to look up what these airline miles are actually worth so that you don't realiz that what's going on here is false advertising and again again to be clear this is not always a scam uh Macy's has done this and it is not a scam you will actually get back what they say you will get back Amazon does this for everything I have against Amazon when you try to sign up for a credit card using Amazon on checkout when they say you will get this statement credit you actually get it it's only with American Airlines and city that a you do not get the credit that is displayed on the website but more importantly B they will say that you are declining the cards so you will then assume that you do not have a card coming in the mail and then when you get the card in the mail they now again have the ability to ding you with this $99 fee that uh that you you you thought you weren't going to get because you were declining the card and even if you do decide to keep the card you are getting $34 up front in exchange for paying $99 at the end of each year this is one of those ways to decrease the cost up front but increase the cost in the long term which at the end of the day is what these blood sucking look to do which is why I just go out of my way to avoid credit cards in debt entirely because I don't want to deal with pieces of like this let me know what you think in the comments down below and if you are checking out on American airlines' website make it a point to not go to sign up for their credit card because in my opinion the entire way this is done is just a scam like you say I'm declined you send me a card with a $99 a year fee you say I'll get 200 back it's actually 34 and lastly they say that it's a statement credit to be clear statement credit meaning that I should be able to use this money on anything that I want because it's a statement credit but in reality all you've provided is Miles which I can only use with American Airlines uh that is a scummy thing to do and I I just don't like these types of business practices like and they seem to be becoming more and more common nowadays which is something that I think we all need to push back on or this is going to become common in every single area of business in every single area of Our Lives Many people say well you know if you don't like it just don't do business with them just don't do business with that company and we're getting to a point where you know again we have to deal with this with socks now with socks I mean we're going to come to get to a point where you need to have your own farm and you need to have your own Mill and you need to have your own sewing machine and you need to have your your own room where you solder together your own smartphone in order to be able to take part in modern society if you want to deal with a company that doesn't do this type of rapy let me know what you think in the comments down below that's it for today and as always I hope you learned something and if you're watching you City Bank and you American Airlines where you breathe

Channel: Louis Rossmann

Views: 164,538

Keywords: American Airlines, Citibank, credit card, discount, credit card offer, scam, false advertising

Id: fiURiiJbvU4

Length: 13min 25sec (805 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2024