March 9, 2015

My Experience Applying for the Citi Prestige 60,000 Points Offer In Branch

When I opened up my Citigold account for 30,000 American Airline miles, I had my eye on applying for the Citi Prestige credit card as a Citigold member since Citigold members received a $100 discount on the annual fee. If you apply in a physical Citibank branch, there is an offer for 60,000 Thank You Points which is double the standard online offer of 30,000 Thank You Points. Since my post on my experience on opening the 30k AA Citigold account was pretty popular, the following is my experience opening the Citi Prestige card in branch. Spoiler alert: Everything worked out as advertised but you need to read my hilarious exchange with the Citibank banker on the benefits of the card below.

Citi Prestige Offer for Citigold Members

I went to my local branch on Saturday February 28th and told a banker I’d like to apply for the Citi Prestige card as a Citigold member. He instantly knew what I was talking about and produced the offer above (sorry for the bad snapshot, only picture I have of the offer). Before letting me apply for the offer, he asked if he could go over the benefits of the card and I mistakenly agreed. Hilarity ensured, here are just two of the blatantly wrong items the banker told me.

Banker: The card gives you $100 Global Entry Credit, which allows you to save $100 on airport taxes for trips outside the United States.
Me: Umm, I think Global Entry is a program that allows for an expedited entry into the United States after international trips.
Banker: No, I used it on a trip to the Dominican Republic to pay for the additional taxes on the airline ticket that the airline didn’t charge me for.

Umm what?!?! I didn’t bother correcting him because I think I was so floored with his response. It gets better. Next exchange –

Banker: The best benefit of this card is a four night free stay anywhere.
Me: I don’t think so, it says *fourth* night free, not that all four free nights are free.
Banker: No sir, that is incorrect. I am sure it is four free nights, I’ve confirmed this in the past.
Me: I’m pretty sure I’m right it’s the fourth night free. Can we ask someone else to confirm?

He proceeds to call some internal Citibank banker phone center and they quickly confirm that it is just the fourth free on stays and that the stays have to be booked through Citibank’s travel program. He claims someone previously gave him “bad information.” Also I didn’t mention that he claimed to already have this card! Seriously, you can’t make this crap up! I must have a thing for bad customer service from Citibank.

Anyway, I finally cut him off about the benefits and that I’ve seen enough to apply for the card. I proceed to fill out the application, he looked it over for maybe 5 seconds and then lets me know he will fax it over to continue the application process. Note: At no point, did he verify my account was actually a Citigold account. I filled in my Citigold account number myself and unless he checked it after I left (doubtful), he trusted that it was an actual Citigold account number and not just another Citibank checking product account number. There have been several reports of being able to get this offer in branch without having a Citigold account (here and here) and after my experience, I agree this to be true though in my example, it is highly dependent on the banker. I obviously didn’t have a bright one…

I knew it would take a few days for the application to appear on Citibank’s side so I started checking on Tuesday March 3rd by calling the automated application status line at 1-888-201-4523. The system failed to my find application until Thursday March 5th, so it took 4 business days for Citibank to process the application. This appears to be in the normal time range of 3-4 business days to wait after your banker submits the application for you.

At that point, my application was marked as pending which meant a call to the reconsideration department at 1-800-695-5171. My call was a little different than normal as the agent kept putting me on hold every 3 minutes and after about 12 minutes, he asked if he could call me back since “he still had to look through a few things.” At this point, I was a little worried and assumed if it was taking this long, it wasn’t a good sign.

About a half hour later, the same rep called back and said the delay was due to a discrepancy between my credit report as I recently closed my Citibank Executive AA card and my credit report still showed it as open. Nonetheless, he was able to offer me a credit line of $9,200 but asked if I wanted more. Considering the higher spend requirement on this card, I asked for $15,000 (I’m pretty sure I could have asked for more) and all he needed to do was get a second signature on the application which took him another few minutes. He came back on the line and congratulated me on my new Citi Prestige card!

Even though I still haven’t received my card yet, I am excited about this new addition to my credit card portfolio (up to 21 active cards). Stay tuned for my full review of the card and why I think you should strongly consider the Citigold + Citi Prestige combo.

March 6, 2015

Free Points Friday: 5,000 Singapore Miles & 1,000 Club Carlson Points

Happy Friday! Here are two quick deals for some free points and miles.

1. 5,000 Singapore KrisFlyer Miles – This is only applicable to new members who register for a Singapore frequent flyer account with an Australian address. You can register at this link and use promo code KFACQPU. Singapore is transfer partner of all 4 major programs (Chase, Amex, SPG and Citi), they have some great award options such as 35k (economy) and 60k (business) miles roundtrip to Hawaii and the KrisFlyer program is really the only option if you want to fly Singapore First Class Suites.

While this is obviously intended to Australians, people have reported success signing up with all their information but using an Austrlian address (a random address generator can help here). Obviously do what you feel comfortable with but if you tried to take advantage of the United mistake fare and used Denmark as your home country for billing purposes, I don’t see how this is much different. Most of us in the travel hacking game already have Singapore accounts but for those down under or the adventurous type without an account, this is an offer worth signing up for.

2) 1,000 Club Carlson Points – Club Carlson is offering members 1,000 Club Carlson points for following Club Carlson on Twitter. To earn your free points, register here and follow @ClubCarlson on Twitter – it’s that simple!

Club Carlson is doing this as a way to promote their #HashtagHotelPromo which is on March 19th when the Club Carlson Twitter account will go private (only allowing followers to see tweets) and they will tweet giveaways along with some free points.

Have a great weekend!

March 5, 2015

Save $75 or $100 on All British Airways Flights Through October 1st

British Airways is sending emails to certain Executive Club members offering a $75 discount on World Traveller (economy) flights or $100 discount on World Traveller Plus (premium economy) flights if booked by March 31st. You can travel now through October 1st.

What I find interesting about this email is that they claim this is an exclusive discount that can only be booked using the dedicated link in your email. However, I found that anyone can use this link and it does not have to clicked from the targeted user’s email to access these discounted fares. By clicking this link, you will see the right-hand side of the webpage show the promotion and when searching for flights, you will see flights appear with the word “discounted” in red.

Here is the link to use to access this promotion.

I did a simple search for a roundtrip flight from NY to London for May to see if I really did save $75 or $100. While searching, I noticed the majority of flights were eligible for this promotion but not all such as the American flights with a BA codeshare (though the terms do seem indicate these should be eligible as well). In short, the fares are truly $75 or $100 cheaper when going through that dedicated page to book flights.

Booking Through Promotion Page

Not Going Through Promotion Page

This certainly isn’t a can’t miss deal but if you plan on booking paid British Airways flights you should at least be able to save $75 or $100.

Here are the full terms and conditions if you are interested:

“This is an exclusive discount and only available via the dedicated link on this page when booking a round-trip through fare (round-trip flights with connection to final destination, separate tickets do not qualify for discount) from US & Canada gateways to UK and beyond. These discounts are applicable to new bookings only made from January 16, 2015 – March 31, 2015, based on round-trip purchase only on any published retail World Traveller (economy), World Traveller Plus (Premium economy), for travel January 16, 2015 – October 1, 2015 on British Airways and British Airways codeshare services with BA flight number operated by American Airlines or Iberia only. Discount does not apply to open jaw journey (only round-trip with same origin and destination permitted). The exclusive discounts will not apply if booked through a British Airways call centre or travel agent. All discounted fares will be highlighted with a red ‘Discount’. All rules of any fare purchased apply. Please refer to individual rules per ticket before purchase. Subject to availability. This offer may be modified, withdrawn or limited by British Airways without notice. Other significant restrictions may apply.”

March 2, 2015

The 75k American Express Business Rewards Gold Offer is Still Alive!

Update 5/9: See this post for latest details, including new link that works a LOT better.

Back in November, I discovered the hack to get a 75,000 point offer to appear on the American Express Business Gold Rewards card and it is my most viewed post all time on PointsCentric. If someone couldn’t get a 75,000 offer to appear, they almost certainly were able to get a 50,000 point offer to appear which was still double the standard offer of 25,000 points. Over the past few weeks though, I have been unable to get any confirmed reports of a 75,000 offer from either my clients or readers so I updated that post to remark 50,000 points is the best current offer. I’m happy to report that a new client last night confirmed she was able to get the 75,000 point offer to appear and successfully apply for it! I tried it out myself this morning and I was approved as well!

Direct Link – https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/credit-cards/business-gold-rewards

The hack, as I mentioned in my initial post about this offer, involves opening up the link for the offer on a mobile or tablet device, generally in private or incognito mode. A few people reported success getting to appear on the computer but I heard many more success stories on mobile devices (seems like Google Chrome, incognito worked the best). Interestingly enough, my client last night used Windows XP on an old desktop (I guess it pays to have an old computer laying around) and she got it to appear. She even sent me the screenshot below.

The 75k Offer is Still Working for Some

This is a big YMMV situation. In fact, I was only able to pull up a 75,000 point offer on my work computer but not my home nor any mobile devices. It might be that an older computer or a computer/device you typically don’t use to sign into your Amex account that has a greater likelihood of getting the offer to present itself – I really don’t know. That said, it might be worth trying to get the offer to appear again since I have a confirmed report of the link still presenting a 75,000 offer that I was able to replicate this morning as well. If you only get the 50,000 offer, that’s not a terrible offer and since you can still churn the Business version, it could make sense to apply for it if you need American Express Membership Rewards points now. If you don’t need the points/have other cards to apply for, then maybe another 75,000 point offer will come around and I would wait for that.

My approval this morning…I called to confirm the 75k offer was on the card

(HT to Alanna!)

March 1, 2015

Point & Center: Marriott Stinks, US Airways 50% Bonus, American Express Premier Rewards Gold Improved & Lots More

There was a TON going on last week in the points & miles but yours truly was dealing with audit deadlines and other work requirements so posts were on the light side last week. With most of that now past me, here is a quick roundup of the big items from last week.

1) Marriott Devalues Twice In One Week – I admit “devalues” might be too harsh a word here but that gives you a sense of what I think about Marriott and their loyalty program. This week they announced their annual hotel category changes that affects over 36% of their hotels with many more hotels increasing a category level (27%) than decreasing a category (only 9%). Of course, they didn’t give us a nice way to sort or look through all the changes – you need to look on this page and search for the hotel you are interested in. You have until March 18th to book awards before the devaluation occurs. This also effects the annual free night from the Marriott Rewards credit card as that can only be booked for a level 1-4 category hotel and you now have less options as more hotels shift out of a level 4 category. I very much prefer the annual free nights from the IHG or Hyatt credit cards.

On top of that, they also announced they will begin enforcing their point expiration policy which is that points will expire after two years on inactivity. That’s really not a big deal except they specifically prohibit transfers from external parties such as Chase Ultimate Rewards as a form of qualifying activity to extend the life of the points. Yes, there are still plenty of other ways to extend the life of points but transferring points from flexible rewards currencies to either airlines or hotels is such an easy & quick way to extend the life of points in most cases. The only Marriott points I have are from the Ritz Carlton 140k credit card offer (yes I used my Marriott # and the points were deposited into my Marriott account, not a Ritz Carlton account) so I once I burn these points, along with my wife’s 140k points, on an air and hotel package, I am officially done with Marriott in any capacity.

2) American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card Improved – Last year, American Express eliminated the extra 15,000 point bonus for spending $30,000 or more on the Premier Rewards Gold card in a year but now they have made some improvements designed to make this card more competitive. Each year, cardholders will be entitled to a $100 airline credit that works in the same way the $200 airline credit works on the Platinum card. Additionally, you will now earn 2x points at US restaurants and there are no longer any foreign transaction fees on the card. The downside to these changes? The annual fee is increasing from $175 to $195, though effectively it is $95 if you use the airline credit correctly each year. This card is now more designed to compete with the Chase Sapphire Preferred though I still don’t think this card is a keeper after year one.

Side note: If you decided to apply for this card, you might be able to get a 50,000 bonus by clicking through CardMatch or trying this link (https://www304.americanexpress.com/credit-card/premier-rewards-gold/25330) in an incognito browser. DO NOT signup for this card with a 25,000 point bonus despite the claims from other bloggers calling the 25k offer a “no brainer”.

Don’t Do It!

Here are some items you should know about:

3) 50% Bonus on Spending on US Airways MasterCard – If you have the US Airways credit card (and you should by now since there is maybe a month or so left to get it before it is gone for good), you can earn a 50% bonus on all spending until you’ve hit an extra 10,000 miles. Miles4More has the details but this card is coming out of the safe for a while for me so I can earn 1.5 future AA miles per dollar. This offer is available to all US Airways cardholders so if you don’t see it when you log in to your account online, call or message Barclays to get the offer.

4) Starwood Category Changes – Just like Marriott, Starwood also announced their annual hotel category changes but thankfully they are much more reasonable in scope. About 22% of their hotels are changing categories but there are actually more hotels decreasing a category than increasing, which is a great for SPG members. You can check out the full list here but I find these changes reasonable compared to Marriott’s changes.

5) SPG & Uber Partner Up – More Starwood news includes a new partnership with Uber in which you can earn Starpoints on every Uber ride (in addition to the points you already receive from your credit card on Uber). The one downside – you do not earn any Starpoints until you’ve had at least one stay with Starwood in the calendar year. After that, you earn 1 SPG point per dollar on Uber with additional points for elite members if they use Uber while staying at an SPG hotel. You need to first link your SPG and Uber accounts here before you can earn additional Starpoints on Uber.

6) IHG PointsBreak – Several times a year, IHG announces their PointsBreak hotels in which you can book hotels for only 5,000 points per night. While that is obviously a great value, I’m never excited by this promotion as the hotels are just really random and almost never in places I have an interest in going to. I’m sorry but places like Candlewood Suites Huntsville – Research Park don’t excite me. However, if you do find yourself in these random areas, then do book these awards.

7) Hilton HHonors Double Points or Miles Promotion – Pretty straightforward promotion from Hilton to earn either double Hilton HHonors points or double miles on Hilton stays from now until May 31, 2015. You can register here and I highly recommend choosing double Hilton HHonors points for the stay. As usual with Hilton, there are a ton of non-participating properties, including one I have a planned stay at in the next two months. That said, still register as you never know when you might actually stay in an eligible Hilton Hotel.

8) Save $25 on Virgin America Flights – Virgin America is now the first airline to accept Visa Checkout for payment and as an incentive to get customers to try it out, you can save $25 on your next Virgin America flight. You must book by July 31st to take advantage of this offer.

That’s it, enjoy your Sunday!