You can make an ACH transfer to an external account, or directly transfer to the Citi Mastercard with the large balance, and so on. I just had a $10k deposit that was not put on hold. However, in the past they did hold an $8k deposit for about a week.

Thanks for the info. Do they allow you to fund the account more than once using CC, or only once when opening the account?

It seems to be a hit or miss process - some folks have smooth sailings from day one, some folks have all sorts of glitches. The aggrevation (and the constant follow-up) seems to be at high level.

edited because it all failed for me.

My understanding is, the Ultimate Saving has to be a standling alone account in order to avoid monthly maintenance fee without minimum balance. If you link it to any other Citibank account, you would have to maintain $6000 COMBINED balance in the "package" in order to avoid monthly maintenance fee in the Ultimate Saving. Otherwise, there is a 5.95 or 6.95? monthly for the Ultimate Saving. At least that was what has been discussed in length and verified with Citibank, according to posts on the related thread at FW.

That is why I wonder whether you can ACH out from Ultimate Saving to pay off the CC used to fund the account to begin with.

1) No fee if Citigold.
2) Citi allows transfers tol/from any account - doesn't have to be a linked account... doesn't even have to be a Citi account.

Marathon,
Sorry, it wasn't clear to me, but were you able to fund your account with citi CC? Was it treated as cash advance. Did you have to pay extra? thanks in advance :)

It does not work no more. sorry.
 

:td: actually, all of this has failed. I just saw citi take back the 18k, the 18k miles and put the money back into my CC. Oh well. Sorry everyone. It dont work.

(ending up paying no fees now so no real loss except the tease of nearly gaining many miles and a few pennies in interest, plus the feeling that you WON, but in this case, it was a no go after all/)

I have since called them and closed the account--that is, after a long, stupid convo with some far away CSR and her manager. Kind of a bummer but I pretty much expected this was too good to be true anyway. If it worked for any of you, then good luck.

On the thread at FW, at least it has been working but people are mostly funding it with cards tied to TY network, or Chase and BofA cards. At least there were no failure reported, as yet. Though most that were successful seem not to have to go thru as many glitches as Marathon reported here, before the charge showed up on their cards.

Has anybody tried to open an "Ultimate Savings Account" in the name of an existing "trust?" When we recently tried opening one, for our mother, this wasn't possible since EVERYTHING had to be done online. (At least we were told that by Citigold.) Even though her primary checking account is in the name of her trust, I think it was due to the "ultimate" needing to "stand alone." But if there's any way around it or if this has since changed, I would appreciate any info. Thanks.

You can only open the account in your own name. They said because of the additional information and security that they can do at a branch and can't do online, such trust or UTMA accts for children, etc are not allowed.