CMHFlyerOH

You will still continue to get the 5X for a year on GGD, but you will get the additional 2X on these new categories. Not sure why some people incorrectly believe that the new earning structure for the TY Preferred card would affect the short term bonus offer, since the terms in the letter explicitly state that short term bonus offers are not affected by this new and improved earning structure.

kaiotes

I got a call from Citi regarding my complaint that was filed w the CFPB on Friday.. They said they would look into it. I wasn't around the answer the call but basically it was a lady from the executive office with a 605 area code. We will see.

virmaior

Citi ignored my CFPB complaint. How did your word yours?

PointsforHolidayBoy

Hello everyone,

For all those upset at Citi, (so that excludes all the naysayers and Citi protectors), I announce that a draft of my petition letter is finished.

If you're interested in editing it or revising it, can you please PM me with your email address? I will give about a 5 day waiting period where I can wait on suggestions, and then post it.

Cheers.

swintec

What for? Direct from the TCs on the card app (bolding mine):

"You may earn ThankYou Points as long as your Card Account is open and current. If your Card Account is closed, you will not be able to earn ThankYou Points and you will lose any accumulated ThankYou Points that have not been transferred to your ThankYou Member Account"

Outside of that, did TYP become a currency that the feds have started to regulate or even care about? They cant even wrap there head around Bitcoins.

kaiotes

very direct
i just said
citi shut my TYP acct. never been late w payments etc, want my points back etc
did not say why i think they did it cuz these are speculation. not relevant yet.

TheChallenge

I also believe that the changes announced in the recent mailer involve just the base earnings on all Preferred cards issued. It shouldn't have any impact on the 5x TY for everyone who has one of those cards.

It also looks like in the mailer that the anniversary bonus will be disappearing for the Preferred card after your next anniversary date. I did find the fact that they are doing away with the anniversary bonus to be troubling. I have a feeling many with the card likely would receive more from the anniversary bonus than they ever would with an extra point on dining and entertainment.

gloreglabert

Wasn't the anniversary bonus like 1%, then 2%, then 3% of the total rewards? That's practically a rounding error.

TheChallenge

Federal agencies aren't the only governing body who might have an interest in regulating points, miles, any other "imaginary" currency. I've worked in various risk management/compliance departments for certain major casino companies in the past, these same companies are routinely sued by state governments on behalf of citizens for rightful possession of their "point" balances. Typically these points are considered rebates liable to be paid in full, with a set minimum value required to be established by the companies due to state regulations and for state tax accounting reasons.

If you happen to live in NJ, NV, MS, MI, or PA the state regulations regarding casino "points" would just as easily apply to bank "points" received from credit card swipes.

thehawk75

Exactly. 1% of all TYPs earned. If you earned 200,000 points in the year (no small feat), you'd get 2,000. What's that worth? $20?

At any rate, this is all moot. Doubtful anyone who earned that amount in my example will even have their card next month, let alone a year from now

TheChallenge

Typically it'd be a rounding error for most people, but then again I think most people on this thread probably push enough through this card that the anniversary bonus would be greater compared to whatever they could earn from the 2x points on dining and entertainment.

While you'd probably get shut down before you could, a 1% anniversary bonus off of 20k points a month would be equivalent to the bonus off of $2400 in spend a year in either a dining or entertainment category. I don't think anyone here on this forum, or the public in general will ever put the kind of spend at a restaurant or movie theater on a Preferred card to make the changes for the better.

I admit I feel in the big picture the anniversary bonus is irrelevant, it's just the fact that Citi is advertising this change like an "improvement" that disturbs me. It's similar to how Citi is advertising the change to payment cutoff time as a customer service "improvement" when really they were forced to by Federal regulators.

Marathon Man

Mainly a complaint to any govt agency or court is best based on the closure of the financial accts such as banks, loans and ccs that one has with citi.

It is these things earn the points that subsequently got taken away.

And since the points got taken away and people here (including myself) would think citi did that wrongly, the two are tied together.

You lose your points if your accounts are closed, but why did they close the accounts?

That is the main issue.

Focus on that--and the tricky circle citi has created

Marathon Man

1) you should redeem ASAP. Many here have said that. GCs work great but I think flights are also great because once confirmed, it is booked and in the airline's system like a cash-paid ticket. Call the airline itself and get THEIR confirmation number of the flight. It should be fine going forward. I have no idea about change fee rules but if you picked what you need, you are set. In fact flight bookings may even be better than GCs because there's nothing to get lost in the mail. YMMV.

2) If you can't figure out what to get for airline tickets, befriend a mileage runner. Think that one through of course, but do consider that FT has many of them. Strike a deal. Make a relationship. Why not? You can get something out of it, and they always need tickets booked in their name in order to fly and get subsequent miles and status from the trip. Many may help but you would want to start building those relationships now and over time.

Thoughts on the irony of US vs THEM:

A recent blogpost by the good Frequent miler has him explaining a situation he recently ran into when he started to offer people 1cent for something...

When I first wrote about XXXX I offered to send people a penny each if they commented in my post, but I cut it off once I had an unmanageably long list of requesters. I moved the list into Excel and have been slogging my way through the list sending each person a penny from my balance. Through this process, though, I discovered something disturbing. Many people seemed to have requested pennies more than once, but with different email addresses. What was the point of that? Did people really think they would get a significant amount of money this way? Were they just trying to sabotage my efforts to spread the wealth? At first I got angry about this, but later it occurred to me that there was a bug in the system. People weren’t trying to scam me.

Strange! Was FM BECOMING like Citi or other entities such as the evil Cartera? Unable to live up to an offer made and then reneging on it because he was overwhelmed by his own design? OMG! Did he think we were GAMING him?

Well, no. He further explained that there had been a bug in the systems he was working with (not his) and none of the above was taking place. But wow, how crazy it is to see that WE (people like FM and other posters who could actually turn against one another) could become like THEM (the Citis and Carteras of the world). Fortunately FM is a human being--I have met him and he is a good bloke. He does not, as citi would, lean towards thinking the negative. He also found and realized the bug and that was that. Citi aint doing that part.

And finally, speaking of things like gaming:

I find that much of what we do here has such unnecessarily negative connotations associated with it. Is it so bad or could it simply be that those NOT into it simply do not understand, and therefore CALL it bad? You know, kind of how someone who was born, say, on some remote island in the South Pacific may say he thinks snow is 'weird' and give that condescending look of disapproval when seeing it for the first time, or how some overly religious pioneer from the 1800s might think today's world is all the devil's work. get it? Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with our actions and I am not here trying to seek justification from the rest of yiz, but I am always curious about the all too often negative-only meanings and connotations behind the following things--most of which I found in Wikipedia and Google. I think we need to find a more positive term to describe our world, don't you all?:

Gaming the system:
~Gaming the system (also referred to as gaming the rules, abusing the system, milking the system, playing the system, or working the system) can be defined as using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system in order, instead, to manipulate the system for a desired outcome.

Trick:
1. An act or procedure intended to achieve an end by deceptive or fraudulent means.
2. A mischievous action; a prank.
3. A stupid, disgraceful, or childish act or performance.

Fraud:
~In criminal law, fraud is intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent, and verb is defraud. Fraud is a crime and a civil law violation, though the specific criminal law definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud.


Hacker: (like travel hacker, maybe?)
A term used in computing for several types of person
~Hacker (computer security) someone who accesses a computer system by circumventing its security system.
~Hacker (hobbyist), who makes innovative customizations or combinations of retail electronic and computer equipment.
~Hacker (programmer subculture), who combines excellence, playfulness, cleverness and exploration in performed activities.


How "bending the rules" can be good for business:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/03/17/execed.rules/

Buying gift cards with credit card to gain points:
https://www.google.com/search?q=buyi...ient=firefox-a


>>>>> So will someone--or everyone who is not a naysayer and a citi loyalist, please help come up with a much better true definition of what it is we do/are? not to INVENT something and hide anything, but rather, to best explain Whiskey Foxtrot Tango we are all about! Seriously, this may even become useful as a counter argument should things ever get legal.

3ZeroT

And to clarify that does not include bonus TYPs (e.g. earned via 5x promo) only the base TY points. So you get another .01 TY points per $ spent at the anniversary. You could spend a million bucks in the year and only get another 10k TY points at your anniversary, yes it is pathetic.

ma91pmh

Good post MM, right on the mark

And on that note I'd suggest we contact the mods to rename this thread. I do not believe there was any "abuse" and frankly if a diligent Citi lawyer was doing some basic research they may bring that up in front of a smalls claim judge ("look they called it 'abuse" themselves"). I would suggest it is renamed something like Citi TY cards closed for unspecified reasons, possibly GC buying" or something more succinct. There is no abuse and frankly at this point it's hard to say exactly why accounts are being closed we just suspect some combo of buying gift cards and then redeeming for checks