Originally Posted by coylerj

My own experience with GI is pretty bad. I have currently 2 certificates from Citi for European coach class air that I cannot use. I've been trying to get to Florence, Italy next June. Because of issues connecting back and forth from Pittsburgh, the only flights that are work for me are on Lufthansa out of Boston. GI has been telling me that no seats are available to them on these flights, even though I started the process 10 months in advance, and according to Orbitz the planes were essentially empty on the days I wanted to fly. GI only would offer me flights on Air France, which simply didn't work with the connections that would permit me to get back and forth to Pittsburgh. They have been very inflexible. I find it hard to believe that 8 months in advance the only flights that they can possibly come up with are on Air France.

In addition, it's next to impossible to get a live person on the phone; I was put on hold in the answering tree for hours at a time, and could only get a live person by complaining to Citi and having them get a call through for me. In addition, emails went unanswered and voicemails went unreturned. All of my requests eventually ended up with a person named Layola, who was simply not helpful and refused to return phone calls.

Essentially, I cannot recommend the Citi cards for flyer points, so long as they are using Global Impact. You can't fly the airlines you want to fly, in spite of what their ads imply. GI will only get you the flights they want you to fly, and I suspect that these are the cheapest available only. If you can't make connections to these flights, well, tough.

Citi managers have suggested to me that they hate dealing with GI as well, and that once their contract is up that they will probably send their business elsewhere. Until this happens, I'll be doing my business elsewhere as well.