bpo26c

Just a heads up to all .. I recently cancelled this card after having it for approximately 2 months and hitting the bonus. The CSR made every effort for me to keep the card and offered an additional 10,000 points after I spent xxxxx amount (can't remember the actual figure). I said no, and then they offered the 10k points if I just kept the card open 2 more months with no spending obligations. I wanted to give everyone a heads up that this offer might be in play when you cancel.

Cheers!

iahphx

My wife's bonus points have just posted (I'm now working on my own bonus) so it's time for me to get serious about how to use these points. Is the airfare option (33% bonus) still the highest-yielding redemption? And tips or tricks in using their TravelCenter to buy airline tickets? Am I correct that if I see a $400 airfare on Expedia or a similar site I should be able to buy it with 30,000 TY points with my Premier card? Does this bonus apply to hotels bought through the TravelCenter, or just airfare? And is there no other redemption with a value over a penny/point?

I also read somewhere that I can transfer points from one account to another. So when I hit my own bonus, I can simply combine my wife's account and my own and get the 100,000+ points all in one place?

Thanks for the help.

beltway

That's doable with Chase Ultimate Rewards, but it would be news to me if it's possible for Citi TYP.

Happy

Why dont you try a dummy booking and see how the mechanism works?

Only booking flights from TY site you would get that 25% discount (essentially a 33% bonus - same thing different way to calculate it depends on which number being used for the base to figure out the %)

TY is no longer run by Expedia since 2009. However the airfares are identical as you go to any of the airlines own site or Orbitz/Travelocity/Expedia. Just so if you choose to redeem the air by 100% of TYPs, you get a break of 25% on the pricing. TYP is at a fixed 0.01 cent per point by the way. Hence without the 25% discount, it is a strict 1c per point redemption value.

There is no trick in doing that. It is a standard website feature. The only "trick" is, the 25% discount is only available when the full air fare is paid by TYPs. You can do Point + Cash but then the point would become 1 cent per point. The lucrative loophole has long been plugged.

Finally, TYP stays good as long as the sponsored card is good. If you cancel your card, the TYP earned by that card will be gone. I believe Citi gives 30 days for you to use that up after the sponsored card is canceled. But I am not sure about this is the definitive answer.

There is a thread in the Credit Card forum on this card in its current form. It may be helpful for some reading.
No discount on booking hotel which in generally is not a good deal anyway with very limited selections, and is extremely opaque - it is booked as a Bulk agency booked room WITHOUT guest name until may be one week before your travel date - all these minor details are clearly spelled out on TY website if you care to read the fine print - to their credit, they DO spell out the opaqueness and how it work so people dont get panic - of course if you dont read then you dont know but that is another topic.

TYP can be transferred to another account but the transferred points expired in 90 days. Therefore unless you have immediate usage of TYPs, I dont see why one would transfer the points between accounts. Again, it is spelled out on TY website.

beltway

I learn something useful almost every day from FT. Thanks, Happy -- you are, of course, entirely correct (per https://www.thankyou.com/tc.jspx).

This will come in very handy later this year when we expect to cancel my wife's Premier card to avoid the fee. Instead of forfeiting her orphaned points, I think I'll move some of my TYP over to top up for a gift card redemption.

sun_aa

The original application link still works and gives the choice of MC/Visa.

I believe the bonus points no longer count towards matching flight points. Is this correct?

Edit: The application page doesn't mention the 50k points. You can get the MC/Visa choice by going through this link.

aeroman380

Same here.

Happy

One more thing we need to keep in mind:

Citi employs a FIFO method when redeeming TYPs - in other words, the points that expire the earliest, would be used first - if this applies to the transferred points, that would be great for your plan.

One of the reasons why I am hesitant to apply another Premium card is, the points earned under the new card (bonus et al) do not expire as long as the card is open. I dont know how it works when the card is closed, when you also have plenty points from other cards that do have expiration date.

Would it mean you need to use up all the other points before you get to make a dent on the points from the newest card that is now canceled and the associated points would be forfeited in 30 days after card closure should you not use them all up? Thus that mean you virtually have to clean out your TYP account?

Though I suspect that Citi is willing to give retention bonus on the card. Do the retention dance a few months before the anniversary so you have enough time left before the anniversary to plot your strategy.

iahphx

Thanks for the summary, Happy. Sounds like there are no tricks to the TY redemption.

I did see on a website somewhere that there was currently the ability to buy a $100 Amazon gift card for 9000 points. I decided to use a small portion of my TY points for this. It's obviously not as lucrative as airfare redemptions, but if you don't currently need airfare -- and you do buy things on Amazon -- it's not a bad deal. Especially since I can usually get about a 10% "cashback" on airfare (using PenFed Amex and a cashback travel agency) and I basically can't get any cashback on Amazon purchases.

Aitchly

Good summary Happy. An addendum, I needed a hotel that was unavailable on the SPG website due to a conference. The conference rate was $189. Perhaps a glitch, but I found the hotel on the TYP site for $159/night.

Even with opaqueness and lack of SPG credit, the $150 savings per night + tax (possibly, the fine print is opaque as well) made this an easy decision.

Happy

So TY Network now offers AMZN gift card again? That is good to know.

If you need airfare, clearly 25% off is better than the 10% cash rebate.

$100 less 25% would be $75. 10% cash rebate of $100 is $10. So $100 less $10 would be $90. You are still paying $90 after the 10% cash rebate, instead of paying $75 with TYP.

Same applies to the Amazon 10% discount redemption if you can actually get it. Saving $10 out of $100 still means you use $90.

How $90 would be less than $75 I do not know You could say that you are willing to only get 10% discount for something you CURRENTLY need versus to get 25% when you will need in the future. But you are basically giving up 60% of your saving as in the form of $10 is only 40% of $25.

That said, I redeemed $100 in each account as I have some TYPs expiring in Aug and no foreseeable airfare that would use TYPs. Still haven't cleaned out the expiring portion but it is a good start. Thanks for the heads up.

Good that worked out for you. Always check other sites to compare the price. I had booked a hotel at Seville during Easter last year because several sites I looked, there was absolutely no acceptably priced room available for the date we needed, yet TY Network had availability. Even Booking.com did not have it when this site usually had a lot of European offerings. One place I failed to check, was to google hotel's own site!!! It turned out the hotel's own website had room available, at about 10% cheaper than what TYP would cost me. Too late, I already redeemed the TYP. It was during the process of confirming the reservation with the hotel to make sure we indeed had a room, that I discovered that room booked thru TYP did not specify guest name at booking. It took many emails back and forth in both English and Spanish to finally confirmed that there was a room booked under a confirmation number (I finally got the info from TYP) BUT no guest name. I had to make sure we had the reservation because it was Easter Friday and Seville basically was sold out except for some $500+ rooms at the Starwood property (a Cat 6) very close to the Cathedral. Our room costed $185 including taxes apparently (no additional payment needed at hotel) for a suite at a hotel at the outskirt of Seville, next to a hospital. We decided to just stay at our suite to watch TV for the prossession. It turned out Seville had severe downpour on Easter Friday and the prossession was canceled. I sure was glad we did not pony up for the Starwood property!

beltway

In my personal experience, it's a bit more complicated. Different Citi TYP-earning cards can, and often do, have different expiration periods associated with the points earned from that card. My recollection is that your second statement (points closest to expiring are consumed first) is correct, but this can be completely non-FIFO.

Happy

When I refer to FIFO it is a simplistic way of saying it because the points closest to expiration dates are the points earned in the earliest period - so that is First in First Out.

However you are absolutely correct about multiple TYP cards because they seem to all carry different type of expiration period, ranging from the short 18 months of PPE to 5 years of the defunct AMEX TYP card.

The most annoying part of course is the PPE card has the earliest expiration date comparing to other TYP card but it usually is the card that many people earn the most TYPs due to the flight point feature. You would have to empty that pile before it gets to use points from other cards - many of us found out this unpleasant nuggut when we canceled the now defunct AMEX TYP card that earned 3%? or 5% on the 1st year? (forgot the exact earning structure), the TYPs from that card had the longest expiration date among all TYP cards - 5 years from earning date! So it is the last layer to be used but then once the card is canceled, the points would be forfeited if you dont use them up in 30 days. I guess the 2009 devaluation eventually forced our hands to use up all the points during the mad dash to redeem the airline tickets.

jjmiller69

Just my opinion, but if it's a Citi card question I usually see the best answers from Happy and Mia. They seem to have alot of experience with Citi. Thanks everyone for taking the time to share it with us, Citi can be a little complicated. I've been watching alot because I have over 165,000 TYP's to use up later this year.

Happy

Oh, I feel for you. I was in similar situation except it was over 200K... Then a flight booked before last March's changes, was traveled in last May and the flight points posted in last July - when those flight points were matched with spend points and posted to the TY account, it changed the expiration date of the whole pile to 2013. It has moved forwards for a couple more months but stopped changing the expiration on last statement despite there were still flight pts turned TYP from that flight. So now I seem to have an April 2013 hard deadline. Still it is much better than the Sept 2012 date before.