As of yesterday, most Citi cards no longer have standard protections that come with most credit cards.
All Citi cards (except for the Costco card) no longer have any of the following benefits:
- Car Rental Insurance
- Trip Cancellation & Interruption Protection
- Travel Accident Insurance
- Trip Delay Protection
- Baggage Delay Protection
- Lost Baggage Protection
- Citi Price Rewind
- Return Protection
- Roadside Assistance Dispatch Service
- Travel & Emergency Assistance
- Medical Evacuation
- Missed Event Ticket Protection
The no annual fee Citi Double Cash and Citi Dividend cards also lost:
- Extended Warranty
- Damage & Theft Purchase Protection
Citi is gambling that users won’t notice the loss of these benefits.
Citi® Double Cash Card, which earns 2% cashback everywhere, is now being upgraded. Citi will allow Citi Double Cash® Cardholders to transfer their cashback into ThankYou points at a rate of $1 cashback into 100 ThankYou points.
That means you are effectively buying ThankYou points for 1 cent each, as you are trading $1 cashback for 100 points. It also means you’ll earn 2 ThankYou points per dollar everywhere with the Citi® Double Cash Card when you transfer cashback into points.
The Citi Double Cash® Card can’t transfer ThankYou points into airline miles (other than to JetBlue at a weaker ratio) on its own. But if you or a friend have a Citi Premier® Card or Citi Prestige card, you can transfer the points earned on the Citi Double Cash® Card into airline miles or an increased value towards paid travel.
Credit card issuers love when they get your whole wallet share, and that’s effectively what Citi is doing here. There is a lot of value to be had when you combine a Citi Double Cash with other Citi cards.
- Bifecta: Add the Citi Premier® Card® card ($95 annual fee, 60K signup bonus for spending $4K in 3 months) and get 3 points per dollar on travel and gas. You can transfer your Double Cash ThankYou points to Premier ThankYou points and then transfer your points into airline miles or get a 25% bonus when you use your points for paid travel.
- Trifecta: Add the Citi Rewards+® Card and get all of your purchases rounded up to the nearest 10 points. That means you can earn 10 points on a $0.50 Amazon balance reload! If you have this card you’ll get a 10% points rebate when you redeem points, up to a 10K points rebate per year. This card can’t transfer points into miles (except for JetBlue at a weaker ratio), but if you have a Premier card you’ll get a 10% rebate on points transferred to miles or used for paid airfare with a 25% bonus.
- Quadfecta: Add the Citi ThankYou business card ($0 annual fee, 20K signup bonus for spending $3K in 3 months, apply in-branch only) and get 3 points per dollar on Advertising Services, Office Supply merchants, and Professional Services in January–March, Computer Equipment and software merchants, and Telecommunications merchants in April–June, Airlines, Hotels and Car Rental merchants in July–September, and Restaurants and Entertainment in October–December.
- Quinfecta: Add the Citi Prestige card ($495 annual fee, 50K points for spending $4K in 3 months) and get a $250 annual travel credit, 5 points per dollar on airfare and dining, 3 points per dollar on hotels and get the 4th night free on hotel stays, twice per year.
It’s great to see more of these killer combos, though not everything is as rosy as it seems here.
You can’t get the signup bonus on a Citi Rewards+, Citi Preferred, Citi Premier® Card or Citi Prestige if you have received a signup bonus or closed a Citi Rewards+, Citi Preferred, Citi Premier® Card or Citi Prestige within the past 24 months.
Citi’s slate of transfer partners is, for the most part, weaker than banks like AMEX and Chase:
- Avianca Lifemiles (Star Alliance): 1K:1K instant transfer
- EVA (Star Alliance): 1K:1K transfer
- Singapore (Star Alliance): 1K:1K transfer
- Thai (Star Alliance): 1K:1K transfer
- Turkish (Star Alliance): 1K:1K transfer
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles (OneWorld): 1K:1K transfer
- Malaysia (OneWorld): 1K:1K transfer
- Qantas (OneWorld): 1K:1K transfer
- Qatar (OneWorld): 1K:1K transfer
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue (Skyteam): 1K:1K instant transfer
- Etihad: 1K:1K transfer
- JetPrivilege: 1K:1K instant transfer
- JetBlue: 1K:1K instant transfer
- Virgin Atlantic: 1K:1K instant transfer
Their sole domestic partner is JetBlue, which has a purely dynamically priced points system that ensures there are no amazing values. They don’t have any hotel transfer options. And they don’t even have a partnership with useful domestic options like British Airways.
However they do have Turkish Airlines, which has an insanely generous Star Alliance award chart, if you can get past their call center’s incompetence to book an award. They have one-way coach awards on United between NYC and LA or even Hawaii for just 7.5K miles and business awards for just 12.5K miles! But they have to be booked over the phone and it can take many HUCAs to do that.
They also have Avianca, which has very good short-haul award values on United.
The 25% bonus for paid airfare means that you can earn an effective 2.5% everywhere by spending on Double Cash and transferring to Premier. However Citi’s travel portal is not as comprehensive as the Chase travel portal and Citi prices are typically higher than Chase pricing.
If you have the Rewards+ card you’ll get another 10% points rebate, bumping that value to 2.75% back everywhere.
Citi has also removed card benefits, which means that purchasing items on Citi cards may not make sense if you won’t get extended warranty coverage or travel protections.
I’ll make another post to how this new trifecta compares to AMEX and Chase bifecta, trifecta, quadfecta, and quinfecta options.
Will you take advantage of a Citi bifecta, trifecta, quadfecta, or quinfecta?
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66 Comments On "On The Heels Of Removing Nearly All Card Benefits, Citi Creates Their Own Incredible Credit Card Trifecta"
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Thanks dan i think this post is worth gold, so if My primary interest is in amassing turkish points would just the citi double be good go?
Absolutely.
To clarify.
So you don’t need the premier card to transfer cashback into airline miles?
“You can transfer your Double Cash ThankYou points to Premier ThankYou points and then transfer your points into airline miles”
So i guess the correct answer to shilos question is “Absolutely not”
Did you read the post?
Citi Double Cash is absolutely the way to go for Turkish miles as you earn 2x everywhere.
You need a Premier/Prestige to actually make the transfer, hence “bifecta.”
I think you need either the Premier or Prestige to be able to convert the TYP’s to airline partners like Turkish. Otherwise I believe you can transfer to TYP, but those TYP’s can only be redeemed for select uses and would exclude the ability to transfer to most airline partners.
Should be added as caveat to open Premier or Prestige over any other card in the “fectas” “Bonus ThankYou® Points are not available if you received a new cardmember bonus for Citi Rewards+SM, Citi ThankYou® Preferred, Citi ThankYou® Premier/Citi PremierSM or Citi Prestige®, or if you have closed any of these accounts, in the past 24 months.”
Added, thanks.
I may have messed up, I did a product change from a Citi AA to Citi Rewards+. Does this count as a new card and I reset the 24 month clock? I have not had a TY product before.
Dan, does the extended warranty on purchases made a year ago get affected by the new rule or is it only on new purchases?
Only new purchases.
You need to have a thankyou card to ve able to transfer the cash back?
You need Premier or Prestige to transfer points into miles.
“This card (Rewards+) can’t transfer points into miles”
They changed this as well, you can transfer to B6.
with a 25% added bonus untill OCT. 19 at 1:1
Clarified.
Didn’t they eliminate the 25% bonus for purchasing airline tickets with ThankYou Points?
Only from Prestige.
So it still applies if I also have Premiere even if I use points earned on my Prestige?
Yes.
So my Citi Costco Card is still covered with all of the above? I guess it’s time to cut up my Dividend card and rely solely on my Costco card…
No, it retains some of those benefits and loses some.
Which ones
I have the Chase CSR and Amex Platinum and just closed my Citi AA card. I don’t see any reason to open a new Citi card.
Citi gives you two points per dollar.
They should change their name to S*itibank
Dan I have both the double cash and att Access card. Will I be able to transfer from DC to att? I’m not seeing any airline transfer options from att…Thanks
Should be able to, but you need Premier or Prestige to transfer points into miles.
Dan,
Can we get an updated post on who has price rewind protection? Used this benefit so many times on my Citi cards and saved significant amounts of money over the last few years. Process was so easy with the Price Rewind website.
Dan, I have a Citi Dividend card, which pays 5% cash back on one or two specific categories of purchases for each calendar quarter. Citi keeps sending me emails trying to convince me to convert it to Double Cash (expires next week). Worth it?
Do you take advantage of those categories?
You can always have both cards if you’ll use them.
I tend to forget the categories when I choose which credit card to use. They did not not offer me an additional card – they offered to let me convert.
You can apply for a DoubleCash card if you want both cards.
You can no longer get the Dividend card, so think twice before you get rid of it.
Great, thanks!
Will Citi shut someone down for doing 100 50c amazon reloads (1000 points instead of 50)? In theory someone with lots of time on their hands could get free flights for loading a few hundred dollars to amazon.
I haven’t heard of shutdowns for that.
I don’t know if i’d want to risk it. I’d maybe risk a handful a week, but just sitting there doing reloads all day. could get both citi and amazon shutdown in 1 swoop
I think the Sears TYP earning card would be part of this feta analysis.
Cocsto card or Costco
If I applied for two or three of these cards the same day, would that be one credit pull (and 1 of the Chase 5/24) or 2/3?
Do I get 10% rebate back from thank you premier points that I transfer to airlines as long that I have a Citi rewards cc?
Or only the points that are transferred from the rewards card to the premier and then to airlines do get the rebate ?
Also can I transfer from rewards card directly to airlines or it must first get transferred to the premier?
Can bank account bonuses offering TY points be transferred to the premiere card?
I just called the Costco Citicard number and was told that trip cancellation and interruption and citi rewind are being discontinued for the Costco Visa.
Why is this better than the new Amex blue with 2% cash back? Is it only better for flights?
And yet another “upgrade” from credit card companies to better serve their customers. Which is why I’ll completely stop using my Citi cards.
@Dan, I called Citi customer care to signup for the trifecta, they told me that they do not offer such a product. They also said that DansDeals is not one of their travel partners. Please explain as I was very confused
Is the 12.5K Turkish for UA ewr – lax only when saver is available or even if no saver availability they will still get it?
Saver.
In that case almost never….
When is this happening? I have double cash and premier and I don’t see that option to transfer my double cash to premier ty ?
It’s live now.
You need to transfer from cashback to ThankYou first and then to Premier.
Wouldn’t having the trifecta give you a minimum of 2.7% Cashback everywhere towards travel through Citi’s travel portal?
(For the first 100,000 points used annually)
Should be 2.75% with the trifecta.
You redeem 2 points to get 2.5%.
Doesn’t that only give you an extra .2%?
$50K spend=$1,000 cashback via Citi DC
$1,000 cashback=100K TYP
100K TYP=$1,250 travel via Citi Premier
10K TYP Rebate via Rewards+
10K TYP=$125 travel via Citi Premier
Total of $1,375 travel/$50,000 spend=2.75% rebate.
Got it.
Thanks.
I think you should add Qantas to the discussion also for it’s two useful purposes: flights to Israel on El Al, and (this one is where I’m more suprised actually) short-haul domestic flights on AA akin to using Avios.
8K up to 600 miles, 12K up to 1,200 miles. It’s not all that far from the Avios domestic redemption, and Qantas also has transfer bonuses just like Avios.
None of these deductions apply to the city AA card, right?
Hi,
If anyone knows of another credit card that offers price rewind, please share.
Does the AA Platinum select Citi card still offer car insurance? Doesn’t say anywhere that it doesn’t
I converted my citi premier to a double cash a few days ago. Is that considered closing the account in which case I wont get the signup bonus if I try applying for the prestige?
Is there a limit to how many points I can transfer to a friends Prestige or Premier card?
Do, if I opened and received bonus of Premier card in August 2017 and closed this card on August 2018, can I open this card NOW again and receive the bonus? Or I need to wait until August 2020?
Dan if you transfer points, the points are only valid for 90 days, unless I am missing something here.
So transfer them when you’re ready to use them.
I’m not sure how you would do it, but would be nice to see a ‘fecta comparison between the banks.