You have to be very insistent with their retentions department when telling them you want to cancel. They will talk in circles and try to entice you to keep the card by any means necessary. If you have no use for a predatory rebuilding card anymore, cancel it yesterday. Make sure you watch your next statement and even after that to ensure proper account closure, and also that they do not sneak any fees on after the fact that could cause the account to go past due if left unchecked. Good luck to you in your efforts and congrats on being able to move on to better cards! 
@Anonymous wrote:First you need to figure out what your AF is. It could be $99, $75, $39. I had the Credit One Platinum (pretty pink card lol) and recently closed their card for their refusal to waive the AF of $39, plus the credit limit was only $1000.
I called 3 times to try and get this fee waived before it became due in March. Twice my calls went overseas and this recent one was based in the States. The first and second rep advised me they couldn't waive the annual fee before it was charged but, if I let the AF post they would then be able to refund it. I don't like that at all. If you can waive the fee, waive it. If not, thank you and let's respectfully end our business together. What happens if the AF posts and then when you call to get refunded they go, I'm sorry you were told wrong information or we've since changed our policy? They could definetely do that and I don't play about money. Also where the heck is my 3rd stimmy??!?
Credit One has at times waived AFs, maybe not permanently but I've read about it on here. Here's my experience. Phone Call 1 January. Phone Call 2 Feb. Call 1 did give me a credit of $8-9 and reduced the APR down to 18%. I don't want to pay an AF period but if I closed the account on phone call 1 I haven't put much effort in, plus I would miss out on my refund/credit of $8-9. So I took the credit and said I would try one more time. Put $200 spend through it for the month, got my credit and paid back to $0. Phone call 2 no other offers were given but again was advised to let the AF post on the card and then call in. No thank you. Card was closed on this call. Phone Call 3, this was actually done today which is quite funny to be posting in a thread about it.
Call 3, I explain I keep getting emails about reopening my account and I would like to speak directly to the retention department to give them one more chance to keep doing business. This call was based in the states and the rep did acknowledge they do have a retention department but they were closed for the weekend and got me his supervisor which took about 20 minutes, no biggie. So I reiterated the story to the supervisor and she told me there was nothing that could be done about the AF. She did not state anything about applying a credit after the fact either. I said thank you and disconnected. Honestly I kind of just made phone call 3 to share data points.
It sounds like your annual fee is $99 a year then which is in fact $8.25 a month. The annual fee is charged by CreditOne for the entire amount of the AF when it becomes due. Once the credit posts, spend it. Then call them back and say I've changed my mind I will not pay any AF and want to close it. The credit which is actually a partial refund for the most recent AF fee was given to get you to keep your account open. So yes you can spend it and still close your account.
OP if you don't need the card close it before the annual fee hits. A fee of any sort for 1% cash back is just paying too much when you have other cards available.
That's a lot of really great, in depth information. Thank you for posting so much detail. Hopefully this will be useful to others (including the OP) in the same boat as canceling cards such as Credit One and other rebuilders are frequent topics that are brought up around here.
