New Citibank offer - AA
 

I guess this is a new offer:

"Open and fund a Citibank checking account with $1,500 by 03/30/2007.

Make a direct deposit into your account or pay two bills online at citibankonline.com. Earn 10,000 AAdvantage bonus miles!

Continue to make direct deposits or pay 2 or more bills online every month for the next 12 consecutive months. Earn an additional 10,000 AAdvantage bonus miles!"

Offer code CE3F

I have some money I could put in and I don't mind paying on line. According to the other thread, they take forever to get the miles in, but I ain't goin' anywhere soon, at least until after the parole board meets again. :)

Any link to an ad scan or the offer document?

There's this:

This offer is not available at Citibank Financial Centers.

†This offer is only available to primary cardholders on the Citi / AAdvantage credit card account who become first-time Citibank checking account customers and is valid only once for any individual. Your Citibank checking account and Citi / AAdvantage credit card must be in good standing at the time the miles are posted to your account. All accounts are subject to approval. Customer must be a citizen or resident alien of the United States (U.S.) with a valid U.S. taxpayer identification number. Taxes, if any, are the customer’s responsibility. Accordingly, we recommend that the customer consult their tax advisor. Persons under 18 years of age are not eligible. Offer may be modified or withdrawn at any time without notice and is not transferable.

To receive this offer: (1) Open and fund a Citibank checking account online with a minimum deposit of $1,500 by 03/30/2007. (2) Within the first calendar month after the account is opened make a direct deposit or make two bill payments at citibankonline.com. (3) 10,000 American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles will be credited to your American Airlines AAdvantage® program account within 120 days of your initial direct deposit or first two qualifying monthly bill payments. (4) If you qualified to earn the initial 10,000 American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles, and you continue to make a direct deposit into your checking account or pay 2 or more bills each calendar month for the next 12 consecutive months at citibankonline.com, you will be eligible to earn an additional 10,000 American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles. The additional 10,000 American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles will be credited to your account within 120 days from the end of the statement period in which you met all of the above requirements.

Citi / AAdvantage credit cards are issued by Citibank (South Dakota), N.A.

American Airlines reserves the right to change the AAdvantage program at any time without any notice, and to end the program upon six months notice. American Airlines is not responsible for products and services offered by other participating companies. For complete AAdvantage program details, visit aa.com/aadvantage.

American Airlines and AAdvantage are registered trademarks of American Airlines, Inc.

††Citibank EZ Checking package is free of monthly maintenance fees and per-check fees with 2 or more qualifying electronic bill payments from, or a direct deposit to, a Regular Checking account during the monthly statement period. Otherwise, when the $1,500 minimum balance requirement is not met, your package will be subject to a maintenance fee and a per-check fee. Qualifying electronic bill payments are individual or recurring bill payments that you make to a third party: by preauthorized transfer; using Citibank Online; or using CitiPhone Banking® bill payment service. Check payments do not qualify. Charges for other account-related services apply. Forbes.com's Best of The Web chose Citibank Online as its favorite online banking site in its Spring 2005 issue.

†††Get cash, get information and transfer balances between eligible linked Citibank accounts at ATMs. ATMs are not owned or operated by Citibank. Not all functions available at all ATMs. 7-ELEVEN is a registered trademark of 7-Eleven, Inc.

and the phone number is

1-800-374-9500, mention Offer Code CE3F

If I chase down the "Apply Now" button, I get this:

https://web-ao.da-us.citibank.com/cg...6DC03E2C7C78AA

might have to fill in the offer code box.

Sounds like a deal I will do. Read the fine print. $1500 balance must be maintained or charges will be levied. I received the email today too.

†This offer is only available to primary cardholders on the Citi / AAdvantage credit card account who become first-time Citibank checking account customers and is valid only once for any individual. Your Citibank checking account and Citi / AAdvantage credit card must be in good standing at the time the miles are posted to your account. All accounts are subject to approval. Customer must be a citizen or resident alien of the United States (U.S.) with a valid U.S. taxpayer identification number. Taxes, if any, are the customer’s responsibility. Accordingly, we recommend that the customer consult their tax advisor. Persons under 18 years of age are not eligible. Offer may be modified or withdrawn at any time without notice and is not transferable.

Phil

...or, take the 10K and run.

Once they post the initial bonus (which admittedly could take a while), the miles are yours, so you don't have to tie up a grand and a half.

Says initial deposit can be by credit card - anyone know if they charge this as a cash advance or a regular charge?

personally, i think i'm going to treat this as an easy 10K and not worry about fulfilling the requirements for the backend. thoughts?

Ditto!

Seems like a hassle to set up the bill pay (unless you don't already have it elsewhere, or want to outright switch) and then have that info in yet another place. The direct deposit may be easier if you can split paycheck to multiple destinations. Just my $0.02.

Can I send money from my paypal business account to this account, would that count as 'direct deposit'?

Bump. Anyone know the answer to this very important question?

Unlikely in the extreme that it is treated as a regular charge. Those days are gone.

The requirements are pretty easy to fulfill for an extra 10K. I signed up for an earlier version of this offer and didn't realize how very easy it would be to make a couple of electronic bill pays every month. Now, I wish I had signed up for the earlier 20K version with the bill pay requirements.

I tried this last year and it did not work for me since I had opened a Citi account previously (was not a "new" customer) and canceled the credit card before the promotion ended that I had synced into the account. Apparently if you cancel your credit card before you get credited the 10k miles then you forfeit the promotion -- and I did not want to pay the annual fee so I went ahead and canceled. Maybe I should have just paid the annual fee... Another alternative is to talk CS into getting you into a bronze card (with no annual fee) but I am not sure if that keeps the promotion valid either. :(

Bad Bank !!!
 

Don't trust Citi Bank !!! They have the most confusing and unfair fine print of any company I have ever dealt with !!! They make the airlines look like angels !!!

Unclear. But you can almost certainly mail yourself checks through the online billpay system and that would count as two bills. Just use slightly different addresses for the two checks.

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."

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 :td: ). 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. :td:

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

I actually did a similar offer about 6 months ago. It was a deal where you deposit any amount and create a savings and checking account and you get the 10,000 miles. I set it up and the miles actuallt came about two or three months faster than indicated in the literature.

As with any of these promotions, save all of the literature than says how many points you were to receive.

For me, this worked smooth as silk and I got my 10,000 miles. If you have the extra money you can set aside, give it a try. I think they were actually a pretty good bank, but I'll stick with my regular bank anyway.