Update. I got a reply to the letter I sent to the head of the Citi credit card division that was pretty much a form letter, but said thanks for telling us and we'll send this complaint upstairs. They said they'd redeposit the points back into my account, which is explicitly something that ThankYou network usually won't do, once you have a certificate.

Today, though, I got a followup phone call from Citi, reaffirming the stuff in the letter. I spoke with him at length, and he confirmed that Global Impact is history. They have changed their travel agent, and done away with the entire certificate thing. They still will only have seats on flights per availability of certain classes of tickets, so if your class of ticket is gone, but the plane is still half empty, you will be out of luck. They will deal with most airlines, but not all of them. Unlikely to join the program in the future are the discount carriers, such as Jet Blue and Southwest. Since they are cheap anyhow, no big deal.

He was frank about their disastrous experience with Global Impact, and said that the agency over the last few months was just going thru the motions and was being obstructionist. Sounds like the number of complaints about them, and by extension their airline ticket reward program, was very very high.

I was glad to get the followup phone call from Citi. It might have something to do with the fact that I've got a lot of investments with their financial arm, but maybe not. I hope the program gets itself turned around. I personally will cautiously reconsider going back to the Citi card, as they seem to want to make this program work.