Joe1690

Does anybody know what the restrictions are on the airline tickets when redeeming thankyou points. For example the 25,000 point redemption for the US/Canada or the 30,000 point redemption for the Carribbean. The reason I ask is that I am considering getting the Citibank Driver's Edge card where you get 3% back at gas stations, grocery stores, and supermarkets (6% for the first year). But the cashback earned can be converted to thankyou points at 100 thank you points for every $1.00 in cashback earned. Thus if I spent $3500 on everyday spending I would have $105 dollars at 3% or 10,500 thankyou points or $210 at 6% or 21000 thankyou points. In addition, the card gives you .01 cents per mile driven so if I drive 10,000 miles in a year which is about what I average then I would get another $100 or 10,000 thankyou points. So the net result would be in the first year with the promotion I could accumulate 31000 thankyou points for $3500 spent and thus go to the carribbean which doesn't seem like a bad deal if the airfare is around $500 bucks. That is approximately 14% in rewards for the first year and after that it would be 9.8% in rewards. Thanks for the help.

Sincerely,

JC

psychtobe

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=462880

Joe1690

pyschtobe,

thanks for the quick reply. I wish there were more commentaries than just 1 experience but it seems like a really good offer and thus I think I might bite the bullet and apply for the card.

Sincerely,

JC

acf573

Presumably as a FTer, you fly quite a bit too. Citi has a card called PremierPass which lets you earn 1 TY pt/mile flown (for the Elite version with $75 annual fee) or 1/3 TY pt/mile flown (for regular version with no annual fee). There are restrictions on how these flight points can be redeemed (must be matched point for point with spending/bonus points).

Another alternative for the everday spending categories is either the Diamond Preferred card (5 TY pts/$ spent for everyday categories, 1 TY pt/$ otherwise) or the Dividend Platinum Select (5% back on everyday categories, 1% back otherwise). These are not promo earning rates.

Check out the few PremierPass threads floating around in this forum. Some members post some anecdotal evidence in there too for TY flight redemptions.