mia

It's no longer necessary to hunt for $100 and larger merchant giftcards when redeeming ThankYou points. $50 cards are now priced 5,000 points, and $25 cards are 2,500 points.

Lower denomination merchant cards, as well as VISA cards, still return less than $0.01 per point.

josephstern

Thanks for the post.

I've been digging around on FT to see if I could find a good strategy for using these points, but I can't find much.

This post leads me to believe that 1c/point is about as good as it gets, unless you want to do airfare, where it's slightly better.

Is that pretty accurate?

beltway

If you have the Citi Premier card, 1.33c/point effective yield. See http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...e-holders.html

And thank you (ThankYou?), mia. This is a noteworthy development.

acf573

I should note that this was actually the original redemption rate for all merchant GCs from TYPs until one of the many devaluations changed that. But good news that this is back (if only because not that many GCs were even available at the 10k/$100 rate).

Happy

They have steep competition from Chase UR - the UR earned from Freedom card can redeem for cash at $25 for 2500 pts if I remember it correctly. Not to mention that UR pts can be pooled so if you have Sapphire Preferred you can consolidate all UR pts in Sapphire's UR account therefore allows you to transfer it to airline miles or hotel points - often have 0.015 to 0.02 value.

snowmt

Thank you premier card are now better than Chase Sapphire:

1) Points can also be transferred but must be used within 90 days
2) Effectively get 2 - 2.2 pts/$, or 2.66 - 2.83 c/$ with matching flight points.
3) Retention offers
4) Citi in general more consumer-friendly than Chase.

By the way, you will get more monthly points from checking account starting in Dec. Easily 600+ pts/month from basic checking,
and much more from citibank or citigold account. Check the fatwallet thread for details:

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1123402/

You can also get the popular Citiforward card to get 5 pts from Amazon, dining, etc. and the points will be automatically pooled with your other thank you points.

mia

This time the devaluation was on the earning side, with so-called Everyday Spending categories reduced from 2X to 1.2X. In that context they can well afford to reinstate the giftcard redemption values.

To be fair we also need to look at the annual fees. Chase Sapphire Preferred is $95 with no cost for additional cards. Citi Premier is $125 plus $50 per user. Sapphire also offers transfers to a few other programs, but Citi does not. Amount and pattern of spending and redemption will determine best value for an individual.

snowmt

Citi Retention offers > Annual fee

Happy

A friendly reminder: TYPs earned from banking product is TAXABLE.

UR points can be transferred to partners while TYPs stuck at Citi.

Both cards have its own strength and weakness. It would be ideal to have both at least one each at the same household.

We will see how Sapphire Preferred annual fee to play out next year given Citi seems to be much more prone to offer reasonably good retention offer while Chase has been far and few in between.

andyli

I think this depends on how you get the points from banking.

If you get the points from an account promotion (i.e. opening bonus), then the points have the impact of having a Form 1099 issued to you. If you get the points from the monthly banking package, then I don't think you get a Form 1099.

I have redeemed quite a bit of points earned by banking over the last few years and have never had the value of the points reported on Form 1099.

Happy

Actually after each of the past devaluation on the flight redemption, people received 1099 on the portion of their points earned from banking including the monthly earnings, in the exact valuation of their tickets worth - i.e. the % of the points from banking is applied to the % of the tickets redemption value, and reported on 1099 accordingly.

I have no points earned from banking because of the tax issue but I remember how people were surprised when they received their 1099s. By their posts they figured out all their pts from Banking products were included in the 1099 calculation.

There is a threshold on how much the value can go unreported if below that threshold. Those redemptions on tickets had very high value especially the July 2007 devaluation - we were able to get between $0.10 to almost $0.20 per point! The Feb 2009 devaluation was a measly 0.02 and 0.03 per point by comparison.

Some of my friends just finished using up the airline credits from July 2007. A poster just reported not too long ago he had $900 DL credit remaining from that redemption when he tried to get a new e-cert... DL told him only $300 could be reissued, but the system spit out $1,200 instead when the agent pressed the button! I still have about $2K AA credit unused yet.

andyli

That's interesting, because the bank did issue me a 1099 last year (even though I was below the IRS threshold), but not for the value of any Thank You redemptions. I would have expected them to just add the Thank You value to the same 1099.

I wonder if it also matters on what you redeem the points for. I have always redeemed them for one of the rebates (student loan/mortgage, etc) and not for airline rewards.

Nonetheless, good heads up for everyone if they intend to redeem for airline rewards...

islandguy84

This is only the case for people with certain cards. For example, I do not have the Citi Premier card (but I do have the Citi Forward and multiple Citi banking accounts) and I do not see the lower options when I login. I see them when I'm not logged in but the second I log in, the points required go back up.

Also, there is a pop up when you go to thankyou.com stating that the options and points required change based on your linked accounts so YMMV.

Happy

On top of that, I thought Citi was going to standardize its card offerings into 3 categories starting the past March.

Yet, now Citi is advertising all sorts of cards that dont have anything to do with the previous 3 categories... In today's Sunday magazine USA Today there is a full page ad touting a Citi Platinum Select card - isn't it the same card already converted to the light blue color Preferred Card? Now it reincarnates with its old name?!

Etroupas

I have a Cit MTVu and a Citi Forward. i am considering applying for the Citi ThankYou Preferred. Are people with the Preferred getting 5k points/$50 gc or 6k points/$50 gc? And if 5k points/$50 gc, I wonder if having one with the better conversion will override the cards with worse conversions or vice versa.