Many people are wondering if they will be able to downgrade the Capital One Venture X Rewards card after year one and not pay the annual fee going forward. Here are some Capital One rules to keep in mind.

1. Annual Fee Refund

Capital One acts very strangely in regards to annual fee refunds. You can get an annual fee refund only if you close the card within 30 days of when the annual fee was charged.

If you choose to downgrade the card, then Capital One will not give you a refund for the annual fee, even within the 30 days. Why they want you to close the card rather than downgrade it, I don’t know.

In order to be able to downgrade the card and not be charged the annual fee, you need to downgrade the card 60 days before the card anniversary. Keep this in mind if you do not want to keep the Venture X card and make sure to remember to downgrade 60 days before the first year is up.

Capital One very often offers an annual fee waiver if you agree to keep the card open as-is, and you have a perfect payment history. Will this waiver be offered on the Venture X card as well? I don’t think so, but you never know…

2. Not Always Available

Downgrades are not always available. They can be targeted for each account, and some cardholders are not able to downgrade their Capital One credit cards. So with Capital One, you are never guaranteed that a downgrade will be possible.

3. Same Family

You can usually only product change a Capital One card within the same card family or brand. I don’t have a confirmed data point, but I believe that the downgrade options for the Venture X card will be the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card ($95) or the Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card ($0).

4. Rewards

You don’t lose any rewards if you downgrade your Capital One credit cards.

5. Credit Score

Your credit score is not affected in any way when you downgrade a credit card.