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TWO NEW THREADS have been created to host 2019 discussion of Citi AAdvantage cards. See also this related thread: Citi AA cards: Discussion of TARGETED offers (includes Mailers and Matching)
Since this is the Citi forum, only Citi AA cards are covered in this wiki. But there are also Barclay AA cards. They are covered in two threads in the Credit cards forum: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cred...d-now-60k.html and https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cred...d-90-days.html Citi AA card discussion from 2018 is HERE Please read this wiki before posting questions in the thread. See FAQ #3 below for a way around the 48-month restriction, including updated restrictions on mailers as of 10/14/2018. All PUBLIC Citi AAdvantage personal card links now deny bonus miles for personal card accounts if you earned a signup bonus on a Citi AAdvantage personal card of the same type in the past 48 months. All PUBLIC Citi AAdvantage business card links now deny bonus miles for business card accounts if you earned a signup bonus on a Citi AAdvantage business card in the past 48 months. See FAQ #1 below for additional details. Previous threads (now closed) on this topic are available for 2013-2014, 2015, and the first 7 months of 2016. For information on the Executive version of this card, see: Citi Executive AA thread Recommended application procedure: Clear cache and cookies prior to applying or use an incognito or private browsing session to apply. Opening multiple different apps in different windows or tabs or failing to clear cookies/cache has resulted in people receiving a lesser offer. Table of Contents Top personal card offers Top business card offers Other personal cards Other business cards Citibank contacts/resources Frequently Asked Questions
Top personal card offers (currently 60K) For the sake of continuity, please do not renumber items in this list. Links are listed in chronological order (newest ones last). Note: except as noted, application pages for offers in this section contain the following (or substantially similar) language: American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles are not available if you have received a new account bonus for a Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® account in the past 48 months. American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles are not available if you have had any Citi / AAdvantage card (other than a CitiBusiness/AAdvantage card) opened or closed in the past 24 months. 34)DEAD 33) Landing page for personal Platinum Select World Elite MC offer for 50K miles after $2,500 spend in 3 months, $99 fee waived first year. Executive Personal Card - As of August 2019, now available to cardholders who have not had the Citi Executive Personal card within 48 months 36) 60K/$6000 Top business card offers (currently 75K) For the sake of continuity, please do not renumber items in this list. Links are listed in chronological order (newest ones last). Except as noted below, all offers in this section contain language stating that: American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles are not available if you have received a new account bonus for a CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® account in the past 48 months. This card is not available if the business already has a CitiBusiness/AAdvantage Platinum Select World MasterCard account. Bonus miles and any additional special offer not available if you have had any CitiBusiness/AAdvantage account opened or closed in the past 24 months. Bonus miles not available if you have had a CitiBusiness/AAdvantage Platinum Select World MasterCard opened or closed in the past 24 months. Landing page for business Platinum Select World MC offer for 75K miles after $5000 spend in 3 months, $99 fee waived first year Q) Landing page for business Platinum Select World MC offer for 60K miles after $3000 spend in 3 months, $99 fee waived first year . R) Landing page for business Platinum Select World MC offer for 60K miles after $3000 spend in 3 months, $99 fee waived first year S ) Landing page for business Platinum Select World MC offer for 65K miles after $4000 spend in 4 months, $99 fee waived first year; Other personal cards 24) DEAD Landing page for personal Platinum Select World Elite MC offer for 50K miles after $3000 spend in 3 months, $95 fee waived first year; a) 30) DEAD Application page for personal Platinum Select World Elite MC offer for 50K miles after $3000 spend in 3 months, $95 fee waived first year. Application page. 32) DEAD Landing page for personal Platinum Select World Elite MC offer for 40K miles after $1000 spend in 3 months, $95 fee waived first year. Application page. 26) Same link as 33 28) Landing page for personal Platinum Select World Elite MC offer for 50K miles after $2,500 spend in 3 months, $99 fee waived first year. Landing page for Citi Gold Mastercard offer for 25,000 miles after $750 spend in 3 months. $50 annual fee, waived first year; current application page, prior application page.
Other business cards K) DEAD Landing page for business Platinum Select World MC offer for 60K miles after $3000 spend in 3 months, $99 fee waived first year Citibank contacts/resources
Frequently Asked Questions The FAQs below will almost certainly answer questions you have about Citi AA Platinum, Gold, and CitiBusiness cards. Do not post in the thread "just to double-check if the wiki is correct"; the wiki is here to avoid having people ask the same questions endlessly. With few exceptions, Citi CSRs and bloggers spread a great deal of misinformation. 1. Are these AA cards churnable? Yes and no. The general rules are:
If you violate the 48-month rule, Citi may still issue you the card but you will not get the bonus. Most of the above rules are new for Citi. Prior to December 2015, receiving the card meant receiving the bonus. Prior to August 2016, the card type and category mattered.
Note that beginning in late 2014, new Citi AA business card offers began including the explicit requirement that the applicant not be an existing AA business cardholder. This language has not been uniformly enforced. When closing a business card, be sure to completely cancel the full account; send an SM or call and request that the account, ending in XXXX and the associated cards, ending in YYYY (etc.) be closed, including the master account. (The master account is the actual line of credit, while the cards are the individual cards associated with each employee of the business.) To find the master account number, go to your online account and select the card you want to close. In the bottom left corner there is a dropdown box next to "Cardholder:" that has the master account and any card accounts listed. 2. Does a product change or card conversion count as a card open/close Yes. Downgrading to a different card (aka a "product change" or PC) counts as closing the AA card. This includes downgrades from AA Platinum to Gold as well as downgrades to non-AA cards. A similar rule has also been true for involuntary, Citi-initiated conversions of legacy, no-longer-issued AA Visa & Amex cards to MasterCards; these events are both a closure (of the old card) and an opening (of the replacement MC). 3. Is there any way around the 48-month restriction? Yes. As of August 2016, there are two ways. a) Targeted mailer offers Numerous FTers received physical mailers with unique invitation codes since 2015 in which the T&C do not contain the 24-month restriction language. E-mailed mailers do not circumvent the 48-month rules even though the application page does not have 48-month language. The T&C for these offers will typically say instead that they are "applicable only to new accounts." This is nothing to worry about; all it means is that Citi won't retroactively match you to the offer on an account you already have; it doesn't disqualify someone who has a Citi AA card or has ever had one. Note: not all mailer offers are worded this way; some contain the standard 24-month restriction, so it is important to read closely. If you would like to get targeted mailers, it is best not to have had a Citi AA card in the recent past. A number of people have gotten mailers by creating an AAdvantage account for a family member with the same last name at their address. Mailers usually start to show up a few months after an AAdvantage account is created, and stop coming once the mailers for that account begin to be used. Frequency of mailers varies widely. Other noteworthy aspects:
b) Pre-qualified offers Multiple FTers (ref; ref) have reported receiving pre-qualified offers that do not include the 24-month/card-family restriction. You can check for pre-qualified offers here. A good results page will have a heading that starts "[NAME], you're Pre-Qualified to apply for the following credit cards offers." A page that starts with "[NAME], we couldn't match your records to a Pre-Qualified credit card offer. See below for [X number] other cards you may like" does NOT contain a prequalified offer even if the page displays more than X offers; the offers presented will almost certainly contain (and Citi will enforce) the 24-month language. 4. What are the most current time-restriction rules in applying for all Citi cards?
For purposes of these rules,
If you get denied for violating any of these rules, you will probably have to wait the full time period (60+/90+ days) before trying again. Use this calculator to establish your dates: http://www.timeanddate.com/date/dateadd.html In addition, FT lore has evolved into soft guidance that you apply for no more than one Citi card (of any kind) in any 8-day period. This is merely prudential guidance, not clearly established Citi policy; there are examples of people applying for two cards in a single day and being approved for the second. However, multiple Citi applications in a short time frame do appear, at least anecdotally, to increase the odds of the second application being denied. (You may see FTers refer to "the 8/65 rule," which refers to this soft guidance plus the strict 60-day rule noted above.) NOTE: There are enough DP on this thread to indicate that Citi sometimes rejects apps that meet 8/65 rule (this is NOT a Citi rule but presumed by frequent long-term churners based on DP shared by various people on this and other boards over the years. Again, this is NOT a Citi rule. If you do not want to take chance, do NOT apply for more than 1 citi card every 75-90 days. An example of the guidance above applied in combination: Day 1 Apply for 65K AA Personal Plat MC - Starts 60-day Day 9 Apply for 50K AA Personal Plat MC using Mailer - Day 66 Apply for 50K AA Business - Starts 24-month clock for AA biz card apps, starts 90-day clock for CitiBusiness cards & updates 60-day clock. No apps of any kind for 3 days, recommended 8 days. Day 74 Apply for 50K TYP Card - Starts 24-month clock for TYP & updates 60-day clock. No apps of any kind for 52 days, recommended 57 days. Day 161 - Open Costco Business card/Close CitiBusiness AA card - Day 9 plus 24 months Apply for 50K AA personal plat MC Day 161 plus 24 months - Apply for 50K AA Business . . . Not sure what day you applied? The date is written year, month, day in the application number: 201702150000 means you applied on February 15, 2017. 5. Do I need to close existing cards before applying? There is no requirement that you close previous personal accounts. The rules for Business accounts vary by individual. Some people can only get a single business card in their lifetime. Others can only get a new business card if their previous business cards are closed. This requires the master account and all employee accounts be closed see FAQ #1 above. Still others can have multiple business accounts open. It is unknown why people end up in one pool versus another. The only way to figure out which pool you are in is to test it out. With the new 24-month language, it is safest to completely close business accounts as soon as the bonus is received. 6. When should I close existing Citi accounts? Citi cards can be closed immediately after receiving a bonus and paying off the balance. There are no verifiable reports of Citi clawing back miles except in cases where charges forming part of the required bonus spend are later reversed (for merchandise return, etc.). Reasons to keep accounts open:
Reasons to close accounts:
7. Can I apply for a business card if I don’t have a business? Anyone can apply for a business card. You do not need a registered business with an EIN. If you do not have a business with an EIN or with bills/accounts in the business name, you can apply using your name as the business. The three possibilities are that: 1. You could be approved unconditionally, 2. You could be asked to fax a couple of bills or accounts (water, electricity, gas, cable, or phone bills, bank accounts, etc.) in the name of the business to Citi, or 3. You could be required to fill out and send a 4506-T tax form. Whatever you do do not make up income etc. about the business. Plenty of people have been issued multiple cards for businesses with $0 annual revenue, 1-5 employees, and 0 years in business. While it may seem that your chances are better with an 'actual' business, Citi does not care. 8. Can I buy Visa gift cards to meet my minimum spend? Purchases from banks are almost always coded as a cash advance regardless of what they are for. Purchases from stores, e.g. CVS, are almost always coded as a purchase. Citi is not very vigilant about policing MS. If you are concerned about it, it’s recommended to send a secure message Citi and have them set your Cash Advance limit to zero. Phone CSRs often say they cannot do this. 9. Do I have to use my own AAdvantage number on applications? Yes. The name on the card application must match the name on the AAdvantage account. You cannot apply for multiple cards for different people and use the same AAdvantage account number. People have reported having as many as 6-7 open Citi AA cards. 10. There is nothing on the application page stating the bonus miles. How do I know what the associated offer is? You need to have faith in the readers of this thread if you want to maximize your miles. FTers constantly apply for these cards and report back to confirm bonus amounts. If you don't feel like trusting in the experiences of others, then apply for an offer with a landing page. 11. After approval, how can I a) confirm the amount of the bonus I can earn and b) determine the deadline for completing the required spend? For personal and business cards, you can always send Citi a secure message through your online account to confirm your bonus amount and deadline. (You must first activate the card and set up online access, either by creating an online account or by linking your new card to your existing online account. Unlike some other banks, Citi does not automatically add your new card to your existing online account.) Note for for Business cards only: Approval letters for business cards do not confirm the bonus. In addition, for personal cards only (and perhaps only for online applications), there are two additional indicators:
Note that these are the only reliable indicators. Asking a Citi phone CSR immediately after you are approved is NOT a sound approach. Such CSRs can only tell you what the bonus offer terms were, not whether you are eligible. (This is because Citi will issue you a card even if you are ineligible for the signup bonus.) 12. When will my bonus miles post? Roughly 2-3 days after the statement closing date, of the of the statement containing the charge that takes you across the spend threshold. You can look at the paper statement (or PDF if online/paperless) and you'll see a section that says "miles earned". Ex: If your statement closed on January 10, 2019, and you met the MSR on that statement, you should see a "miles earned" that has the Bonus miles plus the charges/miles earned. Note that the Citi online account info shows the current AA balance, and it make take several days for the "online" AA balance to show the proper miles. The paper statement will show if/when the bonus miles were earned. 13. Do I get 10% back when redeeming miles for awards? This benefit ended on May 1, 2019. For past discussion of the now-discontinued 10% rebate benefit, see AAdvantage Citi / Barclays 10% miles / mileage rebate (consolidated). 14. Can I cancel a card using secure messaging? Yes, assuming you have set up the credit card in your Citi account. Quick and easy. 15. Which credit bureau does Citi pull and can I force them to use a different one? Citi appears to use Experian most frequently, followed by Equifax. For some people they pull both. It depends on where you are located. You can check the Credit Boards database to see where card issuers have pulled recently. For the most part, freezing Experian, or another bureau, will not cause Citi to pull a different bureau. They will almost certainly require you to unfreeze the bureau they wish to pull or deny your application. Some people have been successful providing the PIN but others have not. Mostly, freezing a credit bureau in an attempt to force Citi to pull a different one seems to waste time, money, and effort for little result. But YMMV. For one person's experiences with various card issuers, check here. 16. When is the 60K (75K, 100K, etc.) offer going to come back? Nobody knows except Citi & they don't announce these things in advance. If we knew, we'd be talking about it non-stop. Please don't ask about it periodically in the thread. If you want to make yourself useful, you can easily look for new offers by testing the URLs
17. Is my card World (W) or World Elite (WE)? It was once useful to know if your card is World (W) or World Elite (WE) because of a loophole that previously allowed applicants to open new accounts and earn signup bonuses less than 24 months since the last open/close of the same card type. That loophole has been closed. (See FAQ #1 above for more information.) Physical card
In the alternative,
18. Why and when does Citi convert cards to World Elite? Can I do anything to trigger the conversion? Citi appears to convert recently opened World MCs to World Elite en masse at periodic intervals once every few months. For most new cardholders, this will occur in the second or third full billing cycle; for holders of legacy Citi AA VISA or Amex cards, the conversion may occur at any time. There is nothing you can do as a cardholder to trigger the conversion. 19. What's the difference between World and World Elite cards? See the wiki at Difference in MasterCard World and World Elite?. 20. Does Citi match bonus offers? Yes. After you activate and link your new card to your online account, send an SM explaining that you heard about a XXK bonus and ask if they can match that bonus to your new card. You have to have a bonus on the existing card. You do not need to explain where you saw the bonus. You do not need to lie, simply read about current bonuses in this thread. The bonus miles normally appear two days after the end of the next billing cycle. Currently, you can match up to the lesser of 20,000 miles over your existing offer and 75,000 miles. If you are rejected, send a new request. If rejected more than once, try sending at a different time of day, use different wording, etc. 21. The CSR told me I was not eligible for the bonus, should I cancel the application?? No. Citi CSRs do not always have complete information. When applying for a card, the CSR can tell that the link is associated with a bonus and that you opened or closed a card within 24 months. However, they cannot tell you whether or not you are eligible for the bonus. Wait for the welcome letter for personal cards or SM after activating a business card if you are unsure. 22. I was following the timing rules but got denied for Multiple Applications for Credit ("MAC"). Why?? Multiple Applications for Credit (or MAC) normally means that you violated one of Citi's application timing rules, like applying for more than two cards in 60 days. Because Citi has trouble counting, applications have been denied in the past if they were too close to 60/90 days. However, starting in August 2016, people have been somewhat randomly getting this denial when applying well outside of the 60/90-day range. CSRs frequently say that you can only apply for a single card in a 60-day period but this is not the case and people who have gotten this denial have gone on to successfully apply for 2 cards in 60 days or less. You can try to request reconsideration or apply again as if the denial was an approval. You do not have to wait 60+ days from the denial to apply again. |
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