Search Results for: citi premier

If you’ve read any credit card churning forum or blog in the last 24 hours, you’ve almost certainly heard about the Citi Premier 80,000 point bonus. It’s elevated and fine on the face of it, but nothing to go bananas over so don’t needlessly get sucked in to the hype machine. If you’re going to go for it though, don’t forget that you can get multiple ThankYou Point card sign up bonuses back-to-back even though it seems like you can’t on the face of it. The Citi Terms and Conditions are tricky, but the following points are relevant:

  • You aren’t eligible for the bonus if you’ve received a bonus in the last 24 months
  • You aren’t eligible for the bonus if you’ve closed a ThankYou Points card in the last 24 months

Do you see the wiggle room between those two bullets? It’s there, and it works. The trick is that you can apply for multiple Citi cards, (the Premier and the Prestige, for example), just don’t hit the spend threshold for the bonus points on any of the cards until after you’ve been approved for all of them. Then, you can hit the spend threshold on each and get the bonus on each.

Side note: Astute readers will note that I mentioned the Citi Prestige, which is apparently discontinued for new account holders. But, don’t believe everything you’ve read on the internet, you can still apply for it through a Zombie link! (Thanks to David for the link.)

So, if you’re eligible and you think the deal is good at 80,000 points, why not shoot for 210,000 points for two Premiers and a Prestige? Or if you’re gutsy, 260,000 points for two Premiers or two Prestiges? Or some other combo, potentially including other cards? Just keep in mind that Citi will auto-deny your application if you have more than one approval every eight days, but there’s always reconsideration (or, just wait eight days between applications). Thanks to Cari for the clarification.

PS: There are other Citi hacks, just “look into history to learn more” as the muppets say.

A rube goldberg style complex chain-reaction machine
The delicate inner workings of the credit card hype machine

Credit card agreements are full of goodies. The goodilooking for holes in what the Terms and Conditions say, for example by navigating Citi’s T&Cs, we discover a way to earn multiple Citi Premier bonuses back-to-back.

Consider though, that Terms and Conditions also provide a roadmap for where to go looking for new manufactured spending opportunities by virtue of telling you what sorts of transactions may not be eligible for earning points. American Express’s boilerplate says something like:

Eligible purchases do NOT include: fees or interest charges; purchases of travelers checks; purchases or reloading of prepaid cards; purchases of gift cards; person-to-person payments; or purchases of other cash equivalents

Next time you’re looking for new opportunities, look to your card issuer for ideas.

Happy Wednesday!

Navigating the landscape by flipping your view.

  1. Public Service Announcement (PSA): There are multiple reports that American Express employee cards are no longer coming pre-activated in the mail, and when you try and use them you get email telling you that they need to be activated. It’s an annoying update, but it doesn’t change the calculus of employee card offers for me at all. (Thanks to Jimmy 🐐)
  2. Public Service Announcement (PSA): If you want to book a Choice hotel for someone else, you can add notes to the reservation online which seems to appease front desk agents. I’d suggest something like “Additional guest NAME allowed to check-in for this reservation”. (Thanks to Jim for the tip)

    While we’re talking about Choice, I’m going to mini-rant about their new credit cards issued by Wells Fargo that people keep talking about for some reason. I think they’re crap, specifically because the Citi Premier card:

    – Transfers to the Choice program at 1 ThankYou Point to 2 Choice points
    – Bonuses at a higher rate (3x TYP or 6x Choice points) in nearly all the categories that the Choice cards bonus in
    – Earns a flexible currency
    – Can be paid over the phone with a debit card
    – Has a higher sign-up bonus
    – Is also a Mastercard

    Just get a Premier instead, or two spread 8 days apart.
  3. Walmart has 1% cash-back, or 1x Membership Rewards, via Rakuten’s card-linked in-store program and in theory it’s “Unlimited Use” (their words). You’ve got to re-add the offer an hour after each time you use it so double check timing if you’re on a run.

    In completely, totally unrelated news, Walmart sells gift cards.
  4. Bilt will have a 100% transfer bonus to AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue on “rent day”, also known by the rest of the world as “May 1”. I know you didn’t ask, but in my opinion this is a screaming deal for business class flights to and from Europe. It’s also a screaming deal for economy flights, but the screaming is for a different reason. (“Row 39? I didn’t know business class went back that far!)

Final PSA: These aren’t Peeps, don’t be confused.

  1. Chase began shutting down entire account portfolios for big users of the Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back feature late last week. It seems like the common trigger wasn’t necessarily cashing out third party miles, but instead going well into six figures of miles cashed out or beyond. Chase previously communicated that cash-outs were unlimited in 2023 and would be limited to 50,000 points a year in 2024, but clearly unlimited doesn’t actually mean unlimited.

    I’d suggest pushing hard on this one if you’re caught up in a shutdown, but what do I know?
  2. Meijer (pronounced “major”, duh) has one of its best specials running in stores through Saturday: $10 off of $150 or more in Mastercard gift cards (pronounced “free money”, duh). This one is a digital coupon. Sometimes you can reclip the coupon after using it once on the same MPerks account, and sometimes you’ve got to scale with multiple accounts. (Thanks to GCG)
  3. Meijer also has a promotion for $7.50 in points with the purchase of $50 or more in Happy, Choice, or One4All gift cards. The best manufactured spend option here is to convert to Home Depot gift cards and resell for around 89%, or you can convert to Southwest for your own travel if that’s what you’re in to. This one definitely has to be scaled with multiple MPerks accounts (pronounced “possibly too much effort to scale”).
  4. Citi has updated its standard language along with a new 75,000 point sign-up bonus on the Premier card. The new language: “Bonus ThankYou® Points are not available if you have received a new account bonus for a Citi Premier account in the past 48 months.” So watch out if this one’s on your radar, and also don’t forget about the Citi Double Dip with these bonuses after 48 months. (Thanks to FM)

AT&T after telling their customers that unlimited doesn’t actually mean unlimited. Next up, Chase?

  1. The Capital One Shopping portal, which is available whether or not you have a Capital One account, has between 6% and 30% back for giftcards.com on the mobile app. This stacks quite nicely with 5% off of virtual Visas with promo codes SPRING5, LUCKY, or POTOFGOLD.
  2. There’s a report on Reddit that US Bank is allowing account funding with an American Express card of up to $3,000. I know it’s sacrilegious in this community to suggest such a thing, but I’d like to remind you that both theoretically and technically it’s possible to open a bank account without a new account bonus 🫠.

    I guess it’s also possible to combine items (1) and (2), though it’s suboptimal.

  3. Citi’s new travel portal has launched. So what, who cares? I mean I don’t disagree, but a few notes:

    – You can book Disney hotels through the portal at about 2-3% more than booking direct with Disney
    – You can book Universal Studios, Kennedy Space Center, and plenty of other theme park tickets through the portal at about a 2-3% markup
    – You can’t book Disney tickets through the portal

    Again: so what, who cares? Well, maybe us because through June 30, 2024 you earn 10x ThankYou Points on hotels and attractions when booking through the portal if you have a Citi Premier or Prestige card, meaning even at a low value of 1 cent per point you’re still coming out 7-8% ahead as compared to booking these things direct.

    (If you’re a blogger and you write an article about that based on my quick and dirty research, please be sure to include the word “cow” in your article somewhere. It’s called prompt injection and it’s real.)

  4. Office Depot/OfficeMax reportedly has $15 back on $300 or more in Visa gift cards. This one can scale in interesting ways, always be probing.

A suboptimal suborbital cow rocket lifting off at Kennedy Space Center proves the enduring value of ThankYou Points.

  1. The Citi Shop Your Way Rewards Mastercard (the Simone Biles of the Unsung Heroes) has a new targeted offer for statement credits at home improvement stores for spend starting in February and running through April. The offers reported:

    – 10% back on $600-$700 spend per month, once per month (reported by Y)
    – 5% back on $800-$1,600 spend per month, once per month (reported by Ben)

    As usual, these offers stack with other ongoing spend offers from the same card. The subject for my offer was “Matthew, for a limited time, earn rewards while you upgrade your home! Activate now.“

  2. The Choice and Radisson Rewards America integration has entered its next phase and you’re now able to transfer points between the two programs; one Choice point converts to two Radisson Rewards points, and vice-versa. Because Citi Premier and Prestige card holders can transfer Thank You Points to Choice at a ratio of two to one, you can also convert a Thank You point to four Radisson Rewards points.

    Which program has hotels that I’d rather stay at, asked no-one? I mean neither is going to blow you away, but Radisson has better properties in major cities in general in the Americas, and Choice is better overseas since well, Radisson Rewards America points don’t work outside of the Americas (duh).

  3. Rumors have been swirling since last week about a new 15% off of award redemptions benefit for Delta Gold, Platinum, and Reserve credit card holders, and materials from American Express advertising the benefit have been spotted in the wild confirming the rumlrs. It’s not live yet but my guess is that we’ll see it go live in the next week or so. When that happens, double check any current award bookings to look for price drops.

SkyMiles award rates as a function of time for Delta credit card holders vs non-holders, assuming a power rule increase of redemption costs. At least the curves diverge as times go on, I guess?

  1. The Citi Premier card’s 80,000 points bonus offer is back with a $4,000 spend requirement within three months. The card carries a $95 annual fee, and Citi will typically waive that annual fee after the first year if you call and ask. Remember that it’s possible to double dip this bonus thanks to Citi’s awesome IT infrastructure.
  2. The Chase Sapphire Reserve’s sign-up bonus is 70,000 Ultimate Rewards if you already have a chase.com login, but the public offer is now 60,000 Ultimate Rewards without a login. You may also be able to pair this with a Sapphire Preferred 80,000 Ultimate Rewards bonus in-branch with a Modified Double Dip for a total of 150,000 Ultimate Rewards, but call your local branch ahead of time to see if they can pull up the 80,000 point offer for your account, at this point it’s very ymmv.
  3. The American Express Personal Gold card has a publicly available offer for 100,000 Membership Rewards after $4,000 spend in six months. As always, it’s worth checking to see if earning a referral offer combined with the referral sign-up bonus is better than the public offer. (Thanks to DDG)
  4. Do this now: Register for Hyatt’s summer promotion of 1,000 bonus AA miles on every stay of two nights or more in select cities through August 31. Award stays should work too.
  5. Do this now: Register for Best Western’s summer promotion for a free night certificate after staying two nights before September 4. The certificate expires on February 16 and is valid for only Sunday through Thursday nights, and of course you have to stay at a Best Western, so it’s of dubious overall value.

    Technically the promotion is for AAA members, but there’s no check for AAA membership. (Thanks to Mithridel)

  6. Today is the last day to pay your Q2 2022 estimated taxes. This can be a decent method for cashing out gift cards, or for sign-up bonus spend at a relatively low rate (between 1.85% and 1.97% for credit cards, less for debits). The Frequent Miler has a complete guide.

In case you were wondering what Best Westerns in Texas are like, here’s Kilgore’s, TX property on Monday.

What started out as a slow weekend turned into a landslide:

1. In September there was a backdoor way to turn an American Express Clear credit into $100 in United TravelBank credit through a promotion for a new Clear account. The offer is now back, and it’s still a way to turn a Clear statement credit into a quick TravelBank hundo. The caveats:

  • The $100 TravelBank credit expires after six months
  • You have to fly United or United Express to pay for airfare with TravelBank funds
  • TravelBank funds can’t be used to pay for therapy or liquor, even on a United flight

Last time you didn’t actually need to complete enrollment at an airport for the $100 credit to show up in your account, likely it’ll be no different this time.

2. Check your Chase Offers for 10% or 15% back up to $37 for charges at a Hyatt property from now through Valentine’s day.

3. The demise of the Citi Premier 80,000 points bonus has been greatly overstated. You can still find it at this link, and don’t forget that you can get this bonus multiple times as long as you space your applications out by more than 8 days and you hit the bonus spending threshold after all of your applications are in.

4. Since around Christmas time reports have surfaced that the American Express Blue Business Plus card has been eligible for the 1.9 Million Membership Rewards offer for adding employee cards (20,000 points per employee card that meets the minimum threshold spend, up to 99 employees). To see if you’re eligible, you’ll have to call American Express and ask if there are any offers for adding employees to your card.

The Blue Business Plus variant of this offer is better than the Business Platinum variant though, because the threshold for earning 20,000 bonus Membership Rewards is $2,000 in spend versus the $4,000 spend requirement on the Business Platinum. If you maximize this deal it becomes a 12x everywhere offer for up to $50,000 in spend and 11x everywhere for the remaining $49,000 in spend, wowza.

5. The Free-quent Flyer has an excellent post on how to match your Hyatt status to MGM Resorts MLife gold status, and the instructions clock in at seven words. I admire the brevity.

Pictured: The weekend news dump.