akr1970akr

Call in and tell them you have a legacy card under the AF CG fee waiver, and that you were told to call in if there were ever problems.

Although I doubt its a routine request for reps, I also suspect that its somewhere in their manual / escalation process.

Good luck.

FrequentFlyer9000

Are there any CITI CREDIT CARD benefits whatsoever that remain for someone who gets a new Citi Gold account? At all? Whatsoever?

akr1970akr

I think the new model is that the *banking side* will give you a credit through their system if you open a Prestige through their branch.

It's not a simpler lower AF for the card.

There are some legacy CG accounts which still have grandfathered no AF cards. I had an old AA Gold card that was like that and the SO still has an AA Plat like that.

(I converted my AA Gold into an ATTA card though, which is no AF anyways)

garykung

Practically none other than the AF reduction of City Prestige.

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akr1970akr

There is part of me that wonders though if the retention offers are different/better for CGers who hold AF cards ex Prestige.

Sometimes I would get fee credits on grandfathered cards where I was already getting the fee waived.

IIRC sometime around 2007 is when they stopped giving out 1 free AF card to CG.

It's pretty strange/sad that they don't do it, especially since the Gold level now is a pretty real amount of assets I think.

garykung

I believe the retention offer tiers with the usage, rather than status.

FWIW - being a CG client does not mean the bank will be profitable from you.

I believe it has something to do with the banking/credit card reform after the financial crisis.

DaveInLA

yugi

I think it's too early to say, since it will only happen after September 1st. I saw in another thread that somebody received a renewal recently for $350. My renewal is in October, so I will be one of the first to test new AF structure.

akr1970akr

Ours renewed back in Jan, after they had announced the new fee structure back in Dec of last year, and ours renewed at 350.

But that's probably an unhelpful dp since we are legit CG and opened in branch with a 350 paper app, so it would be hard to figure out which effect drove our renewal rate.

Even at 350 af, its hard to understand the value prop of the card against competitors like CSP.

or if one could use the airlines credits - which are getting harder to monetize - the Schwab Amex Plat. most CG people can likely get a lower fee Schwab Plat. And if they can use those credits that Plat looks very attractive. (it seems like WN, AA, DL gift card off label usage is harder / impossible now)

KIcarus

From reading this thread, I've come to learn that it may be possible to move my IRA from Schwab into a self-directed IRA held by Citi, which could then make one eligible to qualify for CitiGold. My IRA is composed of a Schwab Total Market Index Fund. I imagine that if I transitioned over to a Citi self-directed IRA, I would not be able to continue to hold this fund, but would be able to hold a similarly-designed index fund correct? I'm only interested in holding one broad index fund in my IRA, and Schwab has a pretty good offering for that. Presuming that I could transition my IRA over to Citibank, I would immediately qualify for a Citi Priority Account, and for Citi Gold in the not too distant future.

Are there any meaningful benefits to having a Citi Priority Account? At one time, the Citi Prioity Account gave a discount on the Prestige Card, but it seems like this will only be available for CitiGold in the future. Are there any other benefits to having a Citi Priority account, especially if one is an expat? I currently live overseas, in a country that also has Citibank branches (and I have a local Citi account here for transferring funds back and forth). I've read through the material online, and I can't help but to think that my Schwab account with a zero minimum balance provides more benefits than the Citi Priority account requiring a $50,000 balance.

garykung

Schwab, in this case, is better than Citi Priority.

At the minimum, you get unlimited ATM rebates, which even apply in overseas. With Citi, you have to pay.

akr1970akr

Why not just have both?

KIcarus

I wouldn't want to go through the hassle of moving my money to Citi unless I was certain I would get a quantifiable benefit--especially if I had to change what fund I'm invested in. It seems like there are some benefits to a Citigold account--Prestige annual fee discount and an Amazon Prime/Hulu subscription paid for. Also, it would potentially be better to have a good relationship with a bank that had branches overseas in case I wanted to avail myself of additional services. However, it doesn't seem to be worth it at this time--maybe after my balances have reached $200,000+.

SpeedRicer

Has anyone ever gotten a prorated or retroactive CG annual fee discount for the Prestige card, if you became CG after your renewal?

With the promotional rates for the Citi Accelerate Savings account, I'm thinking I might deposit enough for Citigold now, but I was already charged my AF in July...

themicah

I don't see much of a value proposition for the Prestige Card (even with the Citigold fee waiver) after 9/22/19 with Citi taking away almost all of their "protection" benefits. I guess it's still effectively 5% cash back on airfare and the Priority Pass is better than Chase if you often travel with immediately family, but I'd much rather get 3 Chase UR points (which are worth at least 4.5% if used to book other flights) and have all the Chase travel protection benefits than get 5 TY points.