agree with u. I had several headaches with citi bank.

I realize that it's unlikely, but it was reported in this thread.

I have two Citi AAdvantage MC accounts, one Gold and one Platinum.

Q1: Does it matter which one I attach to the on-line account if I open one?

Q2: If I were to use the "BILL PAY" to pay the credit card bills for the two cards, would it count as the required two bill pays even though I'd be having Citibank pay Citibank?

Anyone know the answers to either of these questions?

I can't exactly answer, but can tell you that the targetted email they sent was for platinum select.

Indeed, a while!!!!! A bunch of us did the original similar offer back in early September, fullfilled all the requirements within weeks, and are still waiting 5+ months later for the initial bonus (which in that promo was the only bonus). Latest rumors I'd read were that we would finally see it within the next month...

So it's quite likely you do have to tie up $1500 for many many months!

. . . targetted email . . .

Ah, I see: "Offer may be modified or withdrawn at any time without notice and is not transferable."

Agreed! A few months ago they made this same offer, and I set up automatic payments of $10 per month to the utility company and to the cable company. That doesn't pay the full bill, of course, but it meets the requirements of Citibank's offer.

Don't wait around, the rules may require you to start the automatic payments soon after you open the Citi account.

My Outlook calendar will remind me when it's time to close the account.

In all my dealings with Citibank checking accounts (they have various promos for miles and cash), they are very bad about getting you your bonus without having to call again and again (and then it takes a few months). Eventually they will give you the bonus if you have jumped through all the hoops correctly --- however, I am guessing that you will be required to keep the AA MC beyond the free 1yr period, so you will be forced to pay the annual fee to get the miles. I've noticed that they will email this 10K offer to you in the later half of your free year, and I think this is just a ploy on their part to get you to pay the annual fee. I've never seen them email this offer right at the beginning of your free year.

BTW, if you don't jump through each and every hoop they place, they will use that as the reason you don't get your bonus. So don't count on it. In my personal case, after I ACH the money direct from another bank and Citi had it, my account was still frozen (for some unknown reason, they didn't know why). I couldn't access my $1,500 for over 2 months, it was really really ridiculous. All the Citi people were clueless, and would say, oh, it must be because of this blah blah (ridiculous) reason, it'll be unfrozen in 10-14 days. It wasn't like they were waiting for the money to clear, the money was there, and I couldn't use it. In the end, I was just going to close my account w/o the bonus, I was so fed up. At that point some higher up person went in and manually cleared it somehow. Again, totally ridiculous.

While I am no great admirer of big banks, so far, in my humble experience, Citi has come through on its bonus offers (now Washington Mutual, that's a different story ). I got my 10K a couple of months after I opened the account and linked my AA credit card. Admittedly, mine was an earlier version of this sort of offer with no minimum balance requirement. But, even so, I suppose that I could close the account now--about four months in--and keep my miles. Not that there is any reason to do so. Only thing I don't like is not getting my canceled checks back. You can view an image on line, but, its not the same. And, I wonder if you can access the images if you close the account? Probably not. Better figure out how to do a bulk download of the images. @:-)

Many banks dont give cancelled checks these days. BoA universally cancelled this feature, and informed customer by way of a small banner on the statement at the space where they usually used for the Ad, very sneaky. However, even if your account has the feature, if the receipient's bank use electronic image, you wont get the cancelled check back. For example, our Wachovia account has the returned check feature but we do not get the return check of the estimated tax payment to IRS - because IRS's bank uses electronic image and Wachovia only rec'd an image instead of cancelled check back. I received other cancelled checks incl State Farm insurance, from this Wachovia account, but no IRS returned check! I absolutely hate writing checks, so I have very very few checks - I saved the image as soon as it is available online. I also printed the hard copy as well.

Yes, the banks, in general, hate sending out canceled checks. But, I have been involved in too many situations where an old check was very important in proving a payment or something else to want to give up mine.

Many banks still do send back your checks, e.g. World Savings. Or will do so if you demand it.

As to the electronically truncated checks where you just get a copy with your statement, they are, theoretically, legally the same as a real canceled check. How a handwriting expert would verify the signature on a copy of the real check is an open question.

As to the B of A. Well known to be sneaky.

Our Wachovia account does send back checks, EXCEPT, in the case of IRS - because IRS's bank WONT SEND BACK the check but electronic image - so all we get is the same image. It is about the ONLY CHECK I wanted back as record, but alas, it is also the ONLY CHECK that wont be sent back.

I may have to open a World Savings account to see how it goes with the checks sent to IRS - that is 4 to 5 checks a year!

Edit: I forgot Wachovia bought World Savings in 2006, and the 2 banks would fully merge by 2008.

Don't count on getting checks to the IRS back from World.

Its not just the IRS. Many others are offenders, such as Amex and Walmart.

If the payee's bank doesn't provide the actual check to your bank, then you will not get the returned check, only an image. Perfectly legal under recent "improvements" pushed by the banks.

Careful. I dont know all the facts, but Citi is savvy to these things and they know that other banks are different. BofA, for example, has been known to call it a DD when you do ING transfers and those can count on similar promos or rules that they have, but Citi knows of this too. I think you need to do a real one with work or some other DD system.

Apparently they used to; now, however, they have defined 'direct deposit" as income from a job or social security. At least according to the people at fatwallet.com