Originally Posted by coylerj
What happens is, you redeem your points for a certificate, which you redeem for the flights. Problem is, the travel agent won't talk to you until the you have the certificate. Once you have the certificate, you can't reverse the process and turn it back into miles again, and the certificate expires in a year. Thus, if the flights you want are the ones they won't let you book, you are stuck with the certificates, which are nontransferrable. In essence, it is a Catch-22. Either you are flexible and take the flights they give you, or the certificates are worthless.
The Citi thing is really too good to be completely true. You get a LOT of points in short period of time, because they give you miles for flights that you purchase with the card, plus the 2-for-1 points at various merchants. However, you are severely limited in how you use those points for airline travel, if that is your option.
It has not been my experience to need a certificate to talk to an agent. I have always talked to a travel agent, found the flights that worked, and then redeemed the points for a confirmed flight (it shows up on the Thank You website as a "certificate").
I'm not sure why the GI travel agent wouldn't talk to you without the certificate. If that happened to me, I would try to talk to another agent/manager until I got them to find the flights for me before redeeming for a certificate.